From: dlin@weber.ucsd.edu (Diane Lin)
Newsgroups: misc.kids
Subject: Newspaper Article on Importance of Play (LONG)
Summary: play has important benefits
Date: 23 Jul 92 19:41:04 GMT
Organization: University of California, San Diego
NNTP-Posting-Host: weber.ucsd.edu


"It's Time to Get Serious About Playtime", by Elizabeth Mehren,
from the Los Angeles Times, July 22, 1992 (without permission)

Playtime just doesn't get enough respect.  That's the message
from academics and educators who gathered here last week [Boston]
to defend the value of children's play and to argue that play
should be studied and taught in schools of education.

"Play gets overlooked," said Edgar Klugman, a professor of
education at Boston's Wheelock College, sponsor of the weeklong
symposium.  "Society doesn't value it."

Often seen sitting cross-legged in circles on the floor, the
experts who gathered at Wheelock just couldn't say enough about
the benefits of play for young children.

For starters, they said, it's fun.  But equally important, play
makes kids smarter.

"You see its benefits particularly in terms of later development-
-especially when we look at creativity, flexibility and the
ability to cooperate," said Millie Almy, a retired professor of
education from the University of California, Berkeley.

In addition, said Klugman, "kids who have had a great deal of
play are more able to function socially, emotionally and
physically" as they move forward in school and in life.

But such benefits are difficult to quantify,a nd Almy and her
colleagues worry that early childhood education is increasingly
oriented toward test-taking.  Parents who say they want smart
kids should understand that rolling around in the dirt is just as
important as scoring well on standardized testing, they say.

The emphasis on academics starts early.  Experts warn that day-
care programs for 2- and 3-year-olds often market themselves as
"learning centers," and that basic activities, such as finger
painting, that were once known as play are often described to
children and parents as "work."

"It may be exactly the same activity," said Doris Pronin Fromberg
of New York's Hofstra University, "But if the children self-
select it, it's know as play.  If the teacher suggests it, they
regard it as work."

A "back-to-basics" emphasis in early childhood education is one
of the factors endangering play, according to a paper presented
by Klugman and Lyn Fasoli, an education professor at Australia's
Northern Territory University.  Even among preschoolers,
"abstract, pencil and paper tasks" are emphasized, consigning
play to an activity suitable only for "down times."

And the bias against play goes beyond the classroom, Fasoli said. 
"Play is under threat not only in schools, but in society at
large," she maintained.  "You see it from the earliest stages,
when parents relegate play to the act of hanging a mobile over
their infant's crib."

What's more, the dim view of play is reflected in its absence as
a legitimate field of study in most education schools.  Said
Klugman:  "It has such low status in society that...it has no
status in college curricula."

Others bemoaned the absence of credibility afforded to their
field.  "I'm very tired of being laughed at socially because the
subject I work with is play," said Kimberly Blake, and
environmental psychologist from the City University of New York.

"For years we've been actively fighting to get play into the
schools," she said, "but play is non-valued in our society."

Those who attended the conference took time out for some play of
their own.  Trails of crepe paper snaked around the halls and up
and down the stairs, ending at the rest rooms.  Squiggly-swirly
artworks that looked as if they had been created by 5-year-olds,
but were in fact the oeuvres of people 30 to 50 years older, hung
in the corridors.

Still, despite the cries for the inclusion of playtime in
education curricula, most people at the conference found it
difficult to agree on what play is.

Said Fromberg, "Play is like love.  We all may think we know what
it feels like, but can you tell me just what love is?"

As a consequence, great amounts of verbal energy were devoted to
such subtleties as the difference between "dramatic play" and
"sociodramatic play."

Translation:  Dramatic play is what kids do when they are alone. 
Sociodramatic play is what happens when two or more children get
together.

In the search for a viable definition, some educators came close
to drowning in their own metaphors.  "Play is a boat that allows
you to float on a sea of ambiguity," said one conference
participant.

Klugman said the multidisciplinary nature of play makes it
difficult to box play into any single definition.

"You go out there and talk to the anthropologists, the
sociologists, the psychologists, the environmentalists and the
biologists, and you begin to get disagreements," he said. "You
get nuances that are confusing to everyone," especially to
parents and teachers.  Yet parents do manage "to cling to the
probably intuitive notion that something important happens when
children play," Almy said.

Educators too, said Almy.  "That's part of what we've been doing
here," she said and smiled.  "Playing around."

What's needed, said Fromberg, is a kind of Bill of Rights for
children's play; "an executive summary to hand to parents and
policy-makers," so that champions of play will "not be
susceptible to political correctness" and interpretive strictures
that may backfire against them.
==================================================================

What timing!  I just finished typing all this in, and my play
partner is just waking up from his nap :-0.  

Have fun, folks,
-- 
Diane C. Lin			"Live now; make *now* always the
dlin@weber.ucsd.edu	         most precious time.  Now will 
(Dylan's mom, 19 months)	 never come again." (ST:TNG)