Title: A history of children's play : New Zealand, 1840-1950 /
Authors: Sutton-Smith, Brian.
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press,
Year: 1981
Subjects: Play New Zealand History.; Child development
Abstract: When schools became more universal in the expanding industrial society between 1890 and 1920, a new emphasis on the control of children developed, and from 1920 onwards, adult supervision in the form of heavily organized sports and playgrounds encroached more and more upon the untamed freedom of the rural environment. The play of the children in the twentieth century has not always been voluntary, nor intrinsically motivated. From 1920 onwards such structural impositions as heavily supervise playgrounds, organized sports, organized mass leisure, and the panacea of television transformed and domesticated children's play. The author maintains that although children have become healthier, more verbally sophisticated, and more mechanically competent, they are much less physically and emotionally self-reliant. -- Book Jacket.
Contents: pt. 1, The control of children at school, 1840-1890: -- Pioneer children -- On the way to school -- Inside the schoolhouse -- The playground -- A naive world -- Barbaric pastimes -- Out of school, out of doors -- The nineteenth century: an overview; -- pt. 2, The control of children's leisure, 1890-1950: -- Setting the scene -- Adult recreation -- Picnic and parlor -- Schoolteacher and playground -- The playmasters and the new philosophy of play -- An era of change in play -- The organization of games -- Modes of modern recreation -- The playground today (1950): sophistication and mechanization -- The playground today (1950): speed, freedom, and domestication; -- pt. 3, A personal epilogue: -- The control of children in the home, 1950-1980.