This blog continues my reflections on things that retirement has given me time to read and think about. My thinking is inspired by my reading and this blog is influenced by a wonderful
book by psychologist Peter Gray (2013) “Free
to Learn” published by Basic Books. The book made me think a lot about
children and play and in this blog I reflect on my own
childhood and that of my children and grandchildren and the different attitudes to play and learning that have taken place over the last 60 years.
It is a joy to watch my two
grandchildren, now aged 5 and 3 explore the world. My daughter is not afraid of
allowing them to experiment and to take risks. When they were down on holiday
last week the eldest climbed quite a difficult rocky cliff and with
encouragement and some guidance negotiated his way safely back down. He ran
into the quite large waves in the sea and I loved it when he raised his little
fists and cried, “I’m not afraid of you!” When the waves knocked him down he
jumped up laughing. Of course I was standing right beside him and he was only
in up to his knees.
Later this week I met up with a
young friend who had been to visit Sweden as part of her education degree and
was amazed at the freedom the children were given. She commented that her and
her fellow students looked at the environments in which the children were being
educated and what did they see? “loads of health and safety issues – we all
wanted to do risk assessments!” She was shocked that 18 month old children were
allowed to serve their own food, that they could choose when to have their
snacks, that two year olds were climbing trees without adult supervision. We
sat and talked about her visit and she wondered how two countries in Europe
could have such different attitudes.
Of course attitudes are not only
different across cultures, they have also changed over time. I am now 65 and when
I was a child I lived in a suburban area on a busy main road. Across that road
there was a lane that led to the ‘rec’, or recreation ground. There were fields
and hedgerows, some trees, swings and slides and when I was eight I was allowed
to go and play there on my own or with my friends and inevitably we would
interact with other children who made a beeline for the ‘rec’ to play. We
played on the swings and made dens in the hedgerows, we played hide and seek,
‘tag’, British bulldog, all sorts of games with balls or just laid on the grass
and talked. We were different ages, boys and girls played together, we competed
to see how high we could go on the swings – standing and sitting. When it was
time to go home for lunch I made my way back to the main road and waited until
a woman pedestrian came along that I could ask to see me across the road. The
only stipulation my parents made was that if I needed help I asked a woman, and
I didn’t talk to strangers. Straight after lunch I would head back to the ‘rec’
to resume my games. Many of my contemporaries look back on childhood and
recount similar experiences. We were so independent. Today parents who allow
unsupervised play of this kind would likely be labeled ‘bad parents’. Fear of
abduction or child abuse by a stranger is out of all proportion to the actual
likelihood of such things happening. The number of children who are the victims
of strangers has not changed annually over the years and is a very small
figure, yet this or the more realistic fear of traffic is the main reason
parents give for not allowing their children to play outdoors.
When I had my first child I lived
in an urban area but knew I wanted her to have the experience of being
outdoors. Every day I would take her to the park, at weekends we would go to
country parks or just into the countryside. I encouraged her to play outdoors
in the garden, but it wasn’t enough she didn't have the experiences I had had
as a child to freely roam and play. When my second child was two and I was
pregnant with my third child I wanted to find a way for them to experience some
of the freedom to play that I had as a child. To cut a long story short my
husband and I moved to the countryside where we purchased a small-holding. Now
my children had five acres to play in and my three year-old son was always
outside with his wellingtons, wheel barrow, sand, buckets, spades, cars and
created his own play. Soon we had friends whose children came to play. I was
able to watch unfold what I instinctively knew – that children are designed to
play and explore on their own without constant adult supervision.
When I was in school I remember the
lessons being very formal, but in the playtimes we played in the playground and
on the extensive grassy areas. Our games included skipping games, clapping
games, ‘tag’ and hopscotch. We played ‘jacks’ and marbles and sticks.
Friendships were made and broken. We ran around, grazed our knees and I don’t
remember being observed or surveyed the way children in the playground are
today. We were trusted to sort out any disagreements.
I don’t remember being given homework
in primary school. Time after school was a time for playing not for being
coerced into completing homework. Today, as Peter Gray reminds us, we seem to
think that, “children can only learn and progress if they are doing tasks that
are directed and evaluated by adults, and that children’s own activities are
wasted time.” I can’t remember my parents ever being asked to track our
homework or help us with projects. This was quite a contrast to my own
children’s experience. We will never get back the time I spent trying to
cajole, threaten or bribe my children to do their homework. As a teacher as
well as a parent I tried hard to make the projects they were set interesting,
but it was like pulling teeth. After a long, tedious and frequently
mind-numbingly boring days sat at desks they just wanted to let off steam – to
play.
When I was in school the dreaded
11+ hung over us and the final year in primary school was devoted to
preparation for the test – which incidently I failed. The abolition of the 11+
freed up primary schools to make that final year far more pleasurable, but it
was short lived. In 1991, when my youngest daughter was 6 national standardised
tests were introduced and she was part of the first cohort to sit the SATs. Since
then tests have come to dominate the lives of children from four years onwards.
Tests of all kinds have been introduced with one spin-off being competition
between children, their parents, between schools and even nations which has
become all-pervasive. Preparation for performance on the tests is all that seems
to matter and everything else shrinks back in the face of it. It means that more
and more children are spending most of their time sitting still, listening to
teachers, taking tests, reading what they are told to read, writing what they
are told to write and probably daydreaming about what they would prefer to be
doing.
Peter Gray’s book confirms my
belief that the opportunity to play is necessary for children. It is through
play that I learnt how to make friends, feel and overcome fear, solve problems
creatively and feel as if I had some control over my life. I wanted my children
to have the same opportunities and I want my grandchildren to have those
opportunities as well. As Gray says, the things children learn through their
own initiatives, in free play, cannot be taught in other ways.
Autonomy is very important for
healthy mental growth, yet In schools children spend large portions of their
day amongst children of their own age, directed by teachers and sitting at
desks preparing for tests. The so-called ‘wrap-around’ school day provides the
necessary extended child care in our society where both parents working is the
norm not the exception it was when I was a child. Breakfast club and
after-school clubs are again organized and directed by adults, there is little
freedom to learn through play here. At weekends the children of middle class
parents may be ferried from one activity to another: swimming lessons, piano
lessons, football, ballet, karate, birthday parties, etc. It sometimes feels as
if they are on a never-ending merry-go-round of activity and what gets lost is
time and freedom to play, explore, and pursue their own interests.
The change in adult working
practices has been accompanied by a growth in child-care facilities. This means
that many children enter education at ever-younger ages as they attend
nurseries from a few months old. Unlike Sweden that has a longer tradition of
kindergartens, the trend in our child-care facilities has been to become structured
more and more like schools – with adult-assigned tasks replacing play. I was
dismayed when I visited my grandson’s nursery two years ago to find the list of
activities he would have engaged with that day pinned outside the door with a
list of the learning outcomes from each activity. Opportunities for free play
in the nursery school seems to have been drastically reduced as each task the
child engages in is linked to formal learning, not to fulfill the child’s desire
for exploration and discovery. Learning outcomes are pre-specified and the
assumption is that the tasks directed by the adults will facilitate the child’s
development and promote a range of skills and intellectual outcomes. Children
who are not compliant and want to follow their own pathways will be gently
coerced into completing the designated tasks.
In such organized environments Peter
Gray asks when do children acquire the skills and confidence to meet life’s
challenges. He uses the metaphor of prison to describe schools today. In prison
you are involuntarily confined, your liberty is restricted, you are told
exactly what to do, failure to comply results in punishment.
The dominant assumptions I find
in schools today is that children are incompetent, untrustworthy, and in need
of the coercive, corrective forces of schooling to shape them into the kinds of
human beings that the elites of society think they should become. Furthermore,
children are told that if they comply in school everything will work out
well. Gray argues that the forced nature
of schooling turns learning into work suggesting that anything a person is
forced to do, according to someone else’s schedule, using procedures that
someone else dictates, is work. The very act of taking control of children’s
learning in these ways is turning joy in learning into work. This combined with
the constant evaluation of children and comparison with other children causes
anxiety for children. Tests and fear of failure create more anxiety and this in
turn inhibits learning, which occurs best in a playful state of mind.
Increasing numbers of children
are rebelling and refusing to conform and unfortunately many of these children
are labeled as having ADHD (attention-deficity/hyperactivity disorder) – the
incidence of which has risen steadily as the opportunities for real play has
declined. Many of these children are treated with drugs, the long-term effects
of which we don’t know.
We know that rates of
stress-related mental disorders in children and young people are on the
increase, particularly in the last thirty years. The office for National
Statistics for mental health in children and young people in Great Britain say
one in ten children between the ages of one and 15 has a mental health disorder
and research suggests that 20% of children have a mental health problem in any
year. Mental health problems among children increase as they reach adolescence.
Yet politicians continue to call
for more restrictive schooling, not less. More standardized tests, more
homework, more supervision, longer school days, longer school years, more
sanctions against children’s taking time off for a family holiday.
Peter Gray claims that children
do not need more schooling, quite the opposite, they need less schooling and
more freedom. They also need safe enough environments in which to play and
explore, and they need free access to the tools, ideas, and people (including
playmates) that can help them along their own chosen paths.
As parents and grandparents and
concerned adults it is time to call a halt to these practices which I believe are
damaging our children. I recommend Peter Gray’s book to anyone who wants to
know more about the value of letting children direct their own play and
learning.
