Susan Ochshorn is an advocate for early childhood education who keeps track of the good and bad developments affecting young children. She is, needless to say, appalled by the increasing emphasis on academic activities and testing in the early years.
So this is the reason she nearly dropped her iPhone. She opened her phone screen one day recently and discovered an article in Forbes magazine extolling the virtues of PLAY. You read that right. Forbes, the self-proclaimed capitalist tool, published an article on the value of play as a generative force for creativity and entrepreneurship.
John Converse Townsend, the media manager for Ashoka, wrote that: “In order for our global society to develop solutions to pressing problems in an increasingly technology-driven and constantly changing world, we need to re-train our workforce to do what machines can’t: to be enterprising, independent and strategic thinkers—to be purposeful creators.”
He concludes: “If we want a better, smarter planet, we need to change the way the next generation children are taught. Allowing more students to grow up without those prosocial, exploratory skills, leaving them unable to reach their potential, would be criminal.
“Play can deliver.
“What are we waiting for?”
No wonder Susan nearly dropped her iPhone.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“…the value of play as a generative force for creativity and entrepreneurship.”
Exactly. Which is why only the children of the elites need it. You need grunts to run all those entrepreneurial ventures, which is why children of the proles don’t need play.
All pigs are equal. Some are just more equal than others.
Dienne: crucial to point out the hypocrisy.
When self-styled “education reformers” reinvent the wheel, stumble on fire, or discover the wonders of sliced bread, they give each other a hearty round of applause, all the while loudly proclaiming “Why didn’t anyone else think of this before? Good thing we’re here to fix everything educational with our cage busting achievement gap crushing 21st century innovations!”
That’s their public face re the sort of education they are mandating for OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN.
On the other hand, they’ve really had to do nothing more than employ a little “grit” and “determination” by reading past the first sentences of the brochures or websites where they send THEIR OWN CHILDREN or spend a few minutes at said genuine centers of teaching and learning.
Thank you for your comments.
😎
P.S. You may remember Michael Bloomberg, “education reformer” extraordinaire? A man of “rigor” and “mortis” wouldn’t you say?
His girls went to The Spence School. The following is the program overview of kindergarten, taken directly from the school’s website.
[start quote]
Kindergarten is a year filled with explorations. As we welcome our new students to Spence, we fill their days with opportunities to get to know one another and their new school. Our goal is to foster each child’s growing sense of self and appreciation for her classroom and school communities. Students develop ways to care for one another in the classroom, exploring feelings along with the concepts of cooperation, responsibility and respect. We aim for all students to develop a love of learning and a sense of excitement to begin every day. Two teachers are assigned to each Kindergarten class. Teachers integrate each day’s lessons, frequently presenting academic material in the context of play or creative activities. Children also learn to navigate the building as they travel to the library, gym, Dance Studio and Music Room. Art, science and Spanish are taught in the homeroom.
[end quote]
Link: http://www.spenceschool.org/program/curriculumdetail.aspx?pageaction=ItemView&linkid=14
Pretty horrendous, dontchathink? Should we be mounting a rescue mission?
Most puzzling of all, however, is that they’ve been doing this since long before Mr. Townsend discovered the values of play mixed in with everything else. How could this be?
😕
I am currently substituting at a private school that supports plus for all it’s grade levels. In kindergarten they have outside play and indoor choice activities. The are learning to share, cooperate, socialize, build relationships, make decisions, show compassion and kindness, etc. it is a beautiful thing that they will carry on throughout their upper grades. Kindergarten should not be kids on computers unless they are fun ways of learning. It is shareable what is happening in I today’s . Parents would probably agree that muh time on reading can happen in first grade. Let morning meeting activities and mini reading lessons for those who have shown readiness and interest be enough for kindergarteners.
ah, wonderful!
While using your imagination and playing outdoors with friends is important, let’s not forget that having fun might also be an intellectual discussion in a classroom over a scene in “Romeo and Juliet” and how that scene resonates and connects with today’s world.
For instance, after one lively discussion while we were reading “Romeo and Juliet”, one student, who wasn’t all that great of a student, stopped by my desk at the end of the class and said, “That was fun. Can we do it again.”
The topic was how women were perceived based on what Romeo’s friends were saying about girls while Romeo was on the balcony with Juliet trying to seduce her. The core of the discussion focused on how “No” meant “No”. The boy’s argued that “No” meant “Yes” and that “Yes” meant “Yes”. The girls didn’t agree and the fact that Juliet said “No” and that Romeo respected her “No” helped the girls win that argument.
This is definitely not what I think of when I think of “play” in early childhood education.
Did I mention early childhood education in my comment? I don’t think so.
I wasn’t talkign about early childhood education. I was talking about making learning fun when they are in school after reaching age 5 or 6.
Reading for fun or learning should not be painful to the child and yet there are children who hate to read. Why? Because there is no powerful early childhood education program in the United States.
There is only testing and punishment for children, teachers and the public schools.
Sorry, I thought the context was early childhood ed. Although Shakespeare also is not what I think of when I think of “play” in the K-5 grades.
I taught Shakespeare in high school but I started teaching in 1975-76 in a 5th grade class. Three years later, I moved up to teaching 7th and 8th grade English for the next eleven years before moving up again to teach English (in addition to one period of journalism for seven years) at the high school where I worked with kids at every grade level before I left in August of 2005.
Except for three of those thirty years between 1986 to 89 (I moved to another intermediate school on the other side of the freeway that split that school district where the community was solid middle class), I taught in schools surrounded by poverty in a community dominated by violent street gangs.
FLERP, ask Susan to share with you the Shakespeare program that her grandkids are in. Really, really wonderful. The kids are quite young and are getting a LOT out of this. There are ways. And there is a grand tradition, there, going all the way back to Charles and Mary Lamb’s Shakespeare for Children.
That would be Charles and Mary Lamb, Tales from Shakespeare
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
No too long ago, I posted about some professional resources/books on making learning “joyful.” So now that we have taken all of the pleasure out of learning, we have to inject it back in with teaching strategies? This Forbes article strikes me the same way. Gee, maybe teachers actually do know what they are doing! I don’t know who said it first, but you would think Forbes had never heard the adage: “Play is the child’s work.”
Boy, I’m so glad we have Forbes to tell us what every parent and teacher already knows. Jeesh.
PLAY is absolutely the best way for children to learn. It is the work of children and involves exploration, joy, excitement about learning, asking questions, and all good things.
I think you’re talking about playing outside—-not video games. I spent a good portion of my youth outside and not stuck in front of a TV, fiddling with a video game or texting. From what I’ve read, these activities cause problems and actually limit the growth of imagination.
Thank you for posting this. I teach Comp I at a community college, and we are currently reading essays on education. This is one issue we have been discussing, so I will be incorporating this into our readings. We read and discuss “issues” the entire semester, and I make it my goal to try to teach and question in such a way that these students do NOT know my political leanings. BUT, with this unit on education, I laughingly tell my students that my job is to “indoctrinate” my students to recognize educational “reform” for the machine that it is. And I do have them read essays on both sides of opinion on all issues all semester, but the education unit is one unit where I make my opinion known.
When I began teaching Developmental Writing and Comp 1 at this school (2001), we wrote essays in several modes of writing. We began with narrative and expository writing, and we moved towards argumentative. Somewhere in the past six years, we have moved to where these courses ONLY allow for argumentative writing, and of course, this requires them using sources to support their own arguments. Obviously college students need to be able to do this, but I hate that this is our only focus now. It is particularly detrimental for developmental students, who need to learn to write to express themselves before writing to argue. And even that class allow for little of this to happen (As an aside: our school adopted a STUPID Pearson online writing lab component to the developmental class. It is horrid! I taught using the new model of learning for two semester, and I now refuse to teach the class. But I am so glad that when they sold us this wonderful program, Pearson could afford to take our entire department for a meal and wine at one of the poshest restaurants in town for “training.”).
My students were better writers when they were able to “learn” to write at a college-level using narrative and exposition and then moving on to argument. They opened up in those essays, and I was able to connect with them on a personal level and build a level of trust. Once that trust was established, I could move on to the harder stuff, to the harder critiques without them taking it personally.
Now, I only “see” my students in their writing when I have time to fit in a “fun” ( read “non-argumentative”) assignment. I HATE that this is the direction CC is going to take writing for elementary kids.