Pasi Sahlberg and William Doyle have written a wonderful new book about the importance of play for children. Play is important for the healthy development of all children, regardless of their socioeconomic status. It’s title is Let the Children Play.
Since the passage of no Child Left Behind and the implementation of Race to the Top, the federal government and the states have done their best to stamp out play.
Noted conservative Reformer Checker Finn enjoyed the book but thought it smacked too much of Dewey and Rousseau. Play may be fine for our children, he says, but not for poor children, who need to raise their test scores. No play for them! Sahlberg and Doyle do not agree. They argue that children need to run, jump, imagine, sing, dance, and play-act, whatever their circumstances. It’s called childhood, and all children should have one, not just those who are privileged.
Its time to take a stand on behalf of play, fun, joy for all children.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/to-really-learn-our-children-need-the-power-of-play-11565262002
WALL STREET JOURNAL
August 8, 2019
To Really Learn, Our Children Need the Power of Play
By Pasi Sahlberg and William Doyle
Aug. 8, 2019
The U.S. can learn a big lesson from Finland’s education system: Instead of stress and standardized testing, schools should focus on well-being and joy
Five years ago, we switched countries.
Pasi Sahlberg came to the U.S. as a visiting professor at Harvard University, and William Doyle moved to Finland to study its world-renowned school system as a Fulbright scholar. We brought our families with us. And we were stunned by what we experienced.
In Cambridge, Mass., Pasi took his young son to have a look at a potential preschool. The school’s director asked for a detailed assessment of the boy’s vocabulary and numeracy skills.
“Why do you need to know this? He is barely 3 years old!” Pasi asked, looking at his son, for whom toilet training and breast-feeding were recent memories.
“We need to be sure he is ready for our program,” replied the director. “We need to know if he can keep up with the rest of the group. We need to make sure all children are prepared to make the mark.”
Pasi was flummoxed by the bizarre education concept of “preschool readiness.” Compounding the culture shock was the stunning price tag: $25,000 a year for preschool, compared with the basically free, government-funded daycare-through-university programs that the boy would have enjoyed back in Finland.
Pasi had entered an American school culture that is increasingly rooted in childhood stress and the elimination of the arts, physical activity and play—all to make room for a tidal wave of test prep and standardized testing. This new culture was supposed to reduce achievement gaps, improve learning and raise America’s position in the international education rankings. Nearly two decades and tens of billions of dollars later, it isn’t working. Yet the boondoggle continues, even as the incidence of childhood mental-health disorders such as anxiety and depression is increasing.
Finland focuses on equity, happiness and joy in learning as the foundations of education.
Meanwhile, in Finland, William Doyle entered the school system ranked as #1 in the world for childhood education by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the World Economic Forum and Unicef—a system built in large part on research pioneered (and increasingly ignored) in the U.S. Rather than pursuing standardized-test data as the Holy Grail of education, Finland focuses on equity, happiness, well-being and joy in learning as the foundations of education.
Finnish parents and teachers widely agree on several mantras rarely heard in U.S. schools: “Let children be children” and “The work of a child is to play.” A Finnish mother told William, “Here, you’re not considered a good parent unless you give your child lots of outdoor play.”
Finnish children learn to take responsibility and manage risks at very young ages, in school and out. Following local customs, William’s 7-year-old son learned to walk to school by himself, across six street crossings and two busy main roads. One day, on a forest path, William came upon a delighted Finnish father applauding his 6-year-old daughter as she scrambled up a tall tree—to a height that would have petrified many parents around the world. “If she falls and breaks her arm, it will be in a good cause. She will have learned something,” the father said nonchalantly.
In Finland, William experienced an education culture that protects and cherishes childhood, one in which students are immersed in a play-rich education that goes all the way to high school. At his son’s school, William saw children rush to the cafeteria in stocking feet, giggling, hugging and practicing dance steps. Students got a 15-minute outdoor recess every single hour of the school day, rain or shine.
“There are many reasons children must play in school,” explained the school’s principal, Heikki Happonen. “When they are moving, their brains work better. Then they concentrate more in class. It’s very important in social ways too.” He added, “School should be a child’s favorite place.”
The cultural shift is profound. Instead of annual, high-stakes standardized tests, Finnish children are assessed all day, every day, by a much more accurate instrument: trusted teachers who are selected, trained and respected as elite professionals.
Finland has a crucial insight to teach the U.S. and the world—one that can boost grades and learning for all students, as well as their social growth, emotional development, health, well-being and happiness. It can be boiled down to a single phrase: Let children play.
Back in the U.S., that idea has a powerful champion: the American Academy of Pediatrics, which has a membership of 67,000 doctors. “The importance of playful learning for children cannot be overemphasized,” declared the academy’s 2018 clinical report “The Power of Play.”
According to the doctors, play—including recess, playful teaching and discovery, as well as periods of self-directed intellectual and physical activity by children with minimal direct interference by adults—boosts mental and physical health, develops executive function and offers “the ideal educational and developmental milieu for children.” That is particularly true for children in poverty, who can be acutely deprived of opportunities for play inside school and out.
A new emphasis on play can be seen cutting across cultures and ideologies. In China, an experiment in outdoor-play-based preschool and kindergarten known as Anji Play is proving so successful in more than 100 rural schools that it is being expanded—and widely hailed as a national model for early childhood education. In Singapore, education officials are trying to shift a nation of high achievers away from stress, academic ranking and over-testing toward a new vision of childhood exploration and “purposeful play.” In a 2018 speech, Education Minister Ong Ye Kung said, “There is room for parents to step back, give children space to explore and play.”
‘The lifelong success of children is based on their ability to be creative and to apply the lessons learned from playing.’
—American Academy of Pediatrics
Meanwhile, in school districts in Texas, Oklahoma, South Carolina and New York, tens of thousands of children are being given up to 60 minutes of daily outdoor, free-play recess. These experiments are directly inspired by Finland’s schools—and educators are reporting sharp improvements in academic performance, concentration and behavior.
Our own children now attend public schools in two great global cities, New York and Sydney, Australia. In both cities and countries, play is an endangered or nonexistent component of education—even though the American Academy of Pediatrics notes that “the lifelong success of children is based on their ability to be creative and to apply the lessons learned from playing.”
We should take a lesson from Finland, follow doctors’ orders and build our schools, homes and communities on the learning language of children: play.
—This essay is adapted from the authors’ new book, “Let the Children Play: How More Play Will Save our Schools and Help Children Thrive” (Oxford University Press). Mr. Sahlberg is a professor of education policy at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and a former director-general at Finland’s Ministry of Education. Mr. Doyle is a scholar in residence at the University of Eastern Finland.
reagan, nixon moynihan…..Clear-eyed yet optimistic, Finn ultimately gives grounds for hope that the best of today’s bold initiatives–from charter schools to technology to makeovers of school-system governance–are finally beginning to make a difference……..Clear-eyed and optimistic…….no reason not to be given the most dominant national media’s refusal to consider public education worthy of serious discussion.
Great article.
Screen time is NOT what I consider to be “PLAY.”
When kids PLAY, they learn, not by just sitting in front of a FLAT screen.
The Fins are also teaching their students about FAKE NEWS, too. https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2019/05/europe/finland-fake-news-intl/
The Fins share a border with Russia. Russia would love to OWN Finland … where there are ports and harbors for trade.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Ports_and_harbours_of_Finland
My grandson is an only child. We send him to the Boys and Girls Club after school so that he will get a chance to play. We know that play is a foundational element in building a healthy, balanced adult. His public school, which has many poor students, is worried about dropping in the ranks on the “big test.” Most of the curriculum is directed at improving scores on the “big test.” At the Boys and Girls Club he gets to socialize and play basketball with other children. He gets to be a child after school which is better for him at this time in his life.
As a kindergarten teacher and play activist, I am very excited to read this new book! In my spring article in the Washington Post, Pasi Sahlberg is cited as a voice of reason. I am hoping to visit Finland to experience firsthand the teaching and learning in kindergarten which I understand is quite different from here! Through Sajlbrrg and Doyle’s book, I hope and pray this voice will get louder along with other voices ( like those at Defending the Early Years) and we can get back to teaching in kindergarten the way children learn best – hands-on, action-based, engaging the five senses and most of all through PLAY!! I will be buying and distributing many copies of this book!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/05/08/kindergarten-teacher-why-our-youngest-learners-are-doomed-right-out-gate-road-map-fix-it/
I bet you will love Finnish schools.
No academic pressure on babies
RE: Finn’s article
“Finland’s vaunted approach to education, which was (for a time) validated by robust PISA scores…” “Of late, some of the bloom has gone off Finland’s education rose—PISA scores have slid since 2009…”
Not really. Theirs went down a teeny bit. (Ours went down more noticeably.)
2009 PISA Math/Sci/Reading Ranks: Finland 5/1/2, US 29/21/16
2012 PISA Math/Sci/Reading Ranks: Finland 10/4/5, US 34/26/22
2015 PISA Math/Sci/Reading Ranks: Finland 13/3/5, US 40/25/24
“But wait. We’re living in a time when academic achievement is flat at the end of high school; when scads of young people emerge unready for either college or career success; when American employers must look overseas for skilled personnel…” Even if this scare-mongering could be proven, it would contradict Finn’s thesis. The last dozen yrs’ hisch grads have been subjected to the accountability regime he favors since at least 6th grade. The cohort of 2014-2019 grads were immersed in in K-12. He should own his results.
He should own the results. Exactly. Ed Deform has failed utterly by its own measures. It has not “improved outcomes” (test scores) or “closed achievement gaps” (differences in test scores). Put a stake in it!!!
But, but, but, . . . . Diane, Pasi, William: training for Prole children to become gritful, obedient cannon fodder and servants of the oligarchical class must begin from Day 1!!!! If you let them play and socialize in the early years, they will grow up forming human bonds, which can lead to unionization, and even, even . . . my God!!! . . . to questioning of monopoly ownership!!!!
They might start talking crazy talk about democracy. They might start asking for Socialist stuff like access to healthcare for all and a living wage. They might question the wisdom of directives from C-level superiors!!!!
Until the day comes when Proles can be embedded with chips that can deliver real-time total surveillance and punishment-and-reward stimuli, we have to fall back on these admittedly crude but effective technologies–depersonalized learning, standards, test prep, standardized testing, and databases of compliance statistics. Obviously.
Can’t start them early enough. They need to learn in Preschool that the other guy is the competition on their Race to the Top!!!! Who can please the master most? Me! Me! Me! Will you be taking that latte on the veranda, Mistah Gates?
Gotta move up that Data Wall!!!
Here is a link to the book. If it was in the post, I missed it. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/let-the-children-play-9780190930967?cc=us&lang=en&
I bet Finn gets pleasure out of thought and writing about his thoughts. he was obviously given the chance to learn what it is to play as an adult. Those of us that shoot our mouths off are actually engaging in vry productive adult play. All for the betterment of society, we hope. Adult fun is a result of students being taught how to take kid fun and grow it into adult fun. Reading what this blog has to say is a sort of fun, albeit distinguishable from playing fortnite.
“Meanwhile, in Finland, William Doyle entered the school system ranked as #1 in the world for childhood education by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development,…”
So a system that does not subscribe to the “test til you drop” philosophy, topped the world on their stupid international test, PISA, marketed by economists! Why is it so hard for the reformers to admit that their stupid test regime has done absolutely nothing to improve education. Gee! Maybe teachers do know what they are talking about.
Checker Finn really said “Play may be fine for our children, he says, but not for poor children, who need to raise their test scores. No play for them!”
If he did, he is sub-human, a monster, someone thatwould have been happy working on Hitler’s Final Solution.
“The Importance of Play” – Parents.com
“Throughout most of history, kids have spent hour after hour playing with parents, siblings, babysitters, and friends. Play is so important in child development that it’s been recognized by the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights as a right of every child.” …
“Play allows children to use their creativity while developing their imagination, dexterity, and physical, cognitive, and emotional strength,” according to the AAP report. It allows children to explore the world, practice adult roles, and gain confidence. And it improves children’s social skills as well, by helping them to “learn how to work in groups, to share, to negotiate, to resolve conflicts, and to learn self-advocacy skills.”
If play is so important to a child’s development, then what’s the impact of this reduction in play? In conjunction with secondary message that kids are receiving from today’s high-pressure world — that they must be the “best” at all times — kids are showing higher levels of stress, anxiety, and depression. They even resort to cheating in school more than ever before, according to the report.” …
https://www.parents.com/fun/sports/exercise/the-importance-of-play/
“The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds”
“Play is essential to development because it contributes to the cognitive, physical, social, and emotional well-being of children and youth. Play also offers an ideal opportunity for parents to engage fully with their children. Despite the benefits derived from play for both children and parents, time for free play has been markedly reduced for some children. …”
https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/119/1/182
As a child born into a family living in poverty, I would have been one of Checker Finn’s victims if I had been born into the world of Common Core Standards and High Stakes rank and punish tests.
Fortunately, I grew up in a time where I was allowed a lot of time outside playing with children around my age. It is amazing how much that time playing outside helped develop my imagination. In today’s world, as a child, I would have been crushed and would have grown up depressed, angry and without much imagination and little or no creativity.
Oh, it is not easy to restrain the profanity focused at Checker Finn that wants to flow from my fingers through the keyboard to this comment.
I think we have discovered the reason for most of the mass shootings.
I wonder what we would discover if we graphed the history and growth of mass shootings in parallel with the growth of high stakes rank and punish tests. I’ve paralleled an increase of child suicides to the focus on rank and punish tests while cutting back on playtime.
Read his article. The link is there.
“Play may be fine for our children….”. Because where Finn lives, there is a whole other kind of “market” that the parents can use their children as competition fodder or to game the college system……pay to play youth sports. If you can’t afford it, you can’t play it. I live not far from Finn (about 25 mins) and our 2 counties are infected with this pay to play mentality. We live in a bubble close to DC and middle class is about $250,000 per year (and that’s a lowball guess on my part ). Kids around here don’t need recess because their parents are able to pay for sports activities after school….and pay they do and at terribly high costs! Kids can’t make it onto HS sports teams unless they have actively participated in this youth sports nightmare. Finn lives in his Ivory Tower and pontificates his nonsense because he knows nothing else except that money rules.
Diane Maybe it “smacks” of Dewey and Rousseau because these philosophers of education knew something true and valuable about (a good word) the FOUNDATIONS of education (duh).
It also smacks of the fact that much of our FOUNDATIONAL development occurs before we are consciously aware of it—from birth to three or so–during playtime (Piaget is still excellent on this). But because we cannot remember it, some of us (at least) think playtime isn’t important, or even that foundational learning doesn’t actually occur there. We call it “play” and tend to tacitly interpret that term as “wasteful time,” and compare it with “work” which we all admire so much. And it certainly won’t make money for the oligarchs.
It’s certainly a good teacher and educational place or system that can maintain the joy of play, in the way that children experience it, and probably themselves would define it as: the “joy of learning.” CBK
Yes! What ever happened to the idea that play is a child’s work?
Diane That children begin with wonder and learn from that beginning is a given. We should remember the overlap with the parents and other adults who surround them in those early years.
Tom Stitcht, a long-term researcher in adult education, often points to research that shows the correlation of (a) the child’s early development and (b) the educational level of their parents. Adult education and their programs, and student needs, are in a crisis situation and are consistently overlooked in the US.
And yet, the inter-generational issue sits there like the elephant in the room that no one talks about and everyone just walks around. The children who spend the first three or four years in a low-or-no-growth situations (or worse, and then also linked to the economics of poverty) end up needing the most help. And the cycle continues. . . CBK
Yes, PLAY is the work of young (&, actually, older–we need to keep recess at every school!) children, indeed! Play is #1.
Recently, The Goddard School for young children opened in a suburb near my house (private & $$$, of course), & their entire philosophy is play & more play.
& a big YES to your last paragraph at 1:15 PM, Catherine.
I find this guy incredibly arrogant and condescending. Just his putting Rousseau and Dewey in the same camp is offensive. I’m sure it was calculated to make progressive ideas sound ludicrous, but he neglects to show the superiority of his vaunted reform program as evidence. He also gives himself away in his denigration of play. I doubt that he has ever spent a period of time in such a program; you can see his nightmare vision of little creatures running wild in a Lord of the Flies type environment. What does he think teachers of those young children do? Act as guards to the animals in their cages, just there to make sure they don’t harm themselves or each other?
Finn betrays his lack of true edu-wisdom by embracing GERM. Standards and tests, had they been good standards and tests, might have been salutary, but these skills-focused tests are narrow and poorly conceived. They’ve made a travesty of rigorous education in this country. Kids are slaving away to pass his beloved tests, but they’re gaining almost nothing in the process. Does Finn talk to current students? I doubt it. Where is the fruit of this regime? It is fruitless.
But Finn is right that replacing GERM with naturalism would be a mistake. Finn does not reject recess –and I agree we need more recess –but worries that Sahlberg and Doyle want to take the discipline, structure and content out of the classroom, just like Dewey’s wild-eyed acolytes one hundred years ago. Young kids, especially those from non-college educated households, need to imbibe organized bodies of knowledge for their brains and skills to grow. At present we’re starving their brains, and a loose, progressive “play” curriculum, unless it included an efficient mechanism for delivering rich content, would just continue the famine.
For all its progressiveness, Finland has a body of liberally-educated, knowledgeable teachers who believe in conveying content, not just eliciting skills. That’s the missing ingredient in this country. Let us have more recess –and more nourishing direct instruction.
ponderosa I like the general direction and some of the nuances of your post. Some hints of problems reside there, however. For instance, your reference to “. . . just like Dewey’s wild-eyed acolytes one hundred years ago.”
Just like “naturalism” and many well-known theoreticians, their followers often mis-read, misinterpret. and mis-employ the original ideas and work of the “master;” so much so somethings that, when one reads the original work, the relationship of the writing to the supposed implementation is unrecognizable. The principle at work there is often that ignorance too-easily embraces the extreme, the polemical, and the overly-simplified often interpreting the work through self-projection and so the lenses of their own lack of education and psychological disturbances.
Only that kind of thinking would suggest a “loose, progressive ‘play’ curriculum” (without including) “an efficient mechanism for delivering rich content. . . ” and methods based on known child-development principles.
In all the notes I have read here, I haven’t seen anyone suggest such an either/or curriculum (which is often based on political rather than educational principles). Nor do I know any K-12 teachers who would endorse the lack of nuance (you seem to suggest?) is embedded in curriculum that includes play, and even includes teaching methods that, rather than bore children to death (with testing), draw from what makes play attractive, exciting, and even inspirational for children, while consistently showing the way to maturity. I also know no teachers who believe in only “eliciting skills” while avoiding content–a good example of a false distinction. And somehow, the problem of test mania (and sales) is missing?
I don’t think the aim of content learning is served by overdoing testing either. From the child’s point of view, it seems such maniacal ideas make the very idea of “education” into something they don’t want to do, or even hate. CBK
Very well said. Thank you, Catherine.
Dewey and naturalism are not synonymous. Now if you want to use Rousseau as an example of naturalism, go for it.
Invoking Dewey and Rousseau is a distraction. Its a false dichotomy. It’s an effort to discredit a reasonable demand to give children time to play.
Wealthy parents and grandparents, like Checker Finn, know that children need time to play.
All children do.
It’s not complicated.
One of Dewey’s big mistakes, in my opinion, is fixating on a child’s “natural” interests. Most of my interests –such as horticulture or French literature–are not “natural” –they were grafted on to me by adults, either directly or indirectly through their writings. Schools’ job is to create new interests in kids, not just to cultivate the paltry sum of natural interests they come to school with. Sex is a natural interest. Should schools cultivate that? Bring on the artificial interests! Teach them about the Amazon and hieroglyphics and division and outer space and they will have a panoply of new, unnatural interests. What’s truly natural in kids is an appetite for knowledge, and it is this natural appetite that GERM and, ironically, the neo-Deweyites ignore.
Ponderosa, your views are in no way incompatible with play and recess. In elite private schools, there is both high-level academics and lots of sports and play.
Don’t fall into the rhetorical trap of saying that academics can’t co-exist with play. Even Checker Finn says they do—for affluent kids.
My children had a “natural” interest/curiosity about the “natural” world. Digging in the dirt to find bugs, swishing a fishing net in the water to catch minnows, feeding the birds at a backyard feeder. As they grew, their interests became more sophisticated and they sought out content knowledge or were “schooled” in it as they advanced through their education. If they were lucky, they got to “play” with ideas.
Their father is a “natural” tinkerer. From a young age they all served as apprentice tool fetchers and participated in his projects in small ways even if it was only imitating his actions. He made a chain saw toy for the oldest which has been passed on to his daughter, so she can imitate her dad. That son has spent many fire seasons wielding the adult version of that first chain saw that he played with as a preschooler. I could continue on with a similar litany of how the “natural” interests of all my children have developed over the years. That is not to say that formal education has not played a critical role in their learning. It has, but they have internalized the learning they have “played” with.
I do believe there are things that our children should be exposed to for their own good as well as for the good of society. However, I will always be for doing our best to find engaging ways of presenting and/or reinforcing that content. (And,yes, lectures can be engaging. I have a feeling that I would enjoy your classes, lectures and all.)
Diane, I have no problem with play at recess and some academically-oriented play and playfulness in the classroom. But this sounds like a prescription for full-on Dewey-ism, and I do have a problem with that:
“Once that utopian revolution is complete, kids will enjoy a “school experience rich in discovery and experimentation, encouragement, conversation, intellectual challenge, free play and guided play, playful teaching and learning, and respect of children’s voices and individual learning differences.”
In other words, almost anything but teacher talk and transmission of knowledge. This is the Alfie Kohn hippie dream of school and Finn is right that it doesn’t work for most kids. It doesn’t work for my MOSTLY WHITE MIDDLE CLASS students (sorry for the caps, but I’m trying to insulate myself from predictable attacks).
He’s mostly right when he says, “We also have ample evidence that while “playful teaching and learning” does little harm [note he says ‘little harm’ –he doesn’t say it’s good for middle class kids] to middle-class kids with support and structure in the rest of their lives, for children from troubled circumstances it’s a recipe for failure. Many such youngsters already have plenty of “play” of various sorts in their lives [he’s right: in many schools, kids play too much during class and ignore or undermine the lesson], even a corrupted sort of “natural state,” but precious little formal learning—and few of the other benefits (character formation, self-discipline, citizenship, etc.) that also flow from purposeful adult direction.”
Our new school year started a few weeks ago. Today a mom told me her son loves my class (I hear this a lot). He said to her: “Mom, Mr. X’s class is how school should be. He talks to us. He’s clear. We understand. And then he has us use what we learned.” I am not making this up. Mine is not a progressive classroom, yet kids love it and they gain a lot from it. I tend to think Sahlberg, Doyle and Kohn are selling false wares. We need to start spreading the gospel of traditional teaching –it’s in short supply these days.
‘”… And then he has us use what we learned.” ‘
Exactly. You let them play with the ideas. That is probably pretty close to what they do in Finland at the same age. I have a feeling that you are not teaching pre-schoolers and are getting alittle hung up on the word play.
I am not a Summerhill proponent although there are probably some kids who thrived in that environment who would be miserable (and make your life miserable) in your class. I, too, was much happier within a teacher designed structure that allowed exploration under the direction of the teacher but always with the aim of encouraging students to become self-directed learners in the end.
speduktr I too think Ponderosa is actually doing what he is hell-bent on complaining about–sigh . . . the power of the political lens. CBK
ponderosa Thank you for your student’s take on your classroom. Strange, however, that, I don’t have to squint to recognize some of this going on: “. . . kids . . . enjoy a ‘school experience rich in discovery and experimentation, encouragement, conversation, intellectual challenge, . . .’ ”
And I don’t see in your “Utopian” or “hippie dream” quote “. . . almost anything but teacher talk and transmission of knowledge” as you suggest. Then you say: This is the Alfie Kohn hippie dream of school and Finn is right that it doesn’t work for most kids.”
Let me get this right, you are saying that, including the rest of your quote that includes even guided play, that a ” ‘school experience rich in discovery and experimentation, encouragement, conversation, intellectual challenge, . . .’ ” **doesn’t work.” Ooooookay. Let’s move on now folks, while recognizing what straw man politics looks like and where its interpretive lens is: “all liberal education (Dewey) is bad,” and where “liberal” is wrongly interpreted to mean “political.” CBK
I have always been a big supporter of transmission of knowledge. That’s pretty much the point of my book Left Back, which knowingly referred to Richard Hofstadter’s history of anti-intellectualism.
You should not dismiss or stereotype Dewey. He lived in a time when children sat at their desks, listened to the teacher, read the textbook, recited what they learned in the textbook. They were bored. He wrote about the value of interest as a motivation.
To understand Dewey’s deeply intellectual views, read the book “The Dewey School,” written by two people who taught there. I promise you will be astonished by the depth and the richness of the academic curriculum.
The Dewey School tried to solve the problem of making a highly academic curriculum interesting.
Dewey was not A.S. Neill. He was not Alfie Kohn. He understood that children are humans, not inert processors of information.
Do read “The Dewey School.” Report back.
Diane,
You’ve piqued my interest in “The Dewey School” and I’ll try to read it.
In a way, though, it doesn’t matter much what Dewey really meant. What matters is the current incarnation of his ideas. Whether he meant to or not, he helped engender a nationwide bias against teacher-led instruction. This is insane and invidious, but it’s become not just bedrock educational orthodoxy, but bedrock American culture –parents and kids parrot the gospel of “hands on” and “child centered”. This bedrock prejudice is seldom questioned. Lecturers never brag about lecturing; if anything, they apologize. This is why I’m so ardent in my defense of the sage on the stage approach: it is SUCH a pariah. It desperately need champions. Being here in the trenches, among the teaching corps, I probably feel it more than you.
When you say that the teacher-led instruction Dewey reacted against was “boring”, you may be right, but I’m not sure you’re right. What is the evidence? Was Dewey just libeling lecture to bolster his alternative ideas? What did he base his claim on (perhaps it’s in the book you recommend)? Did he interview the “victims” of these “boring” lectures to find out? Maybe the actually enjoyed their lessons!
And even if it turns out that many lectures are boring (not the worst thing in the world) or fruitless (an unforgivable fault), it does not follow at all that progressive ideas are better. In fact, I know implementing progressive ideas in my classroom would result in many lost, frustrated and wayward students. I see this when I do veer into progressive territory by allowing students to write and perform skits. The top students usually excel. Many of the others squander time, feel frustrated and fail to get much out of it (there are exceptions). By contrast, even my lowest students reliably gain knowledge from my lectures.
If lectures are boring, the solution is to make them interesting (there’s an art to this that is –scandalously –not taught nowadays) not to abolish them and substitute and even worse form of pedagogy.
If you haven’t read it already, I hope you’ll read this. It the powerful argument for lecture (“fully guided instruction”) that may finally put a stake in the heart of “discovery learning”, a popular progressive idea:
Click to access kirschner_Sweller_Clark.pdf
You are right that lectures are not by their nature necessarily boring. I’m sure most of us have listened to people who are artists at lecturing. Your defense of the lecture format is justified, but you do not have to do it by dismissing approaches which have been labeled as progressive as if it were a dirty word. Furthermore, blaming Dewey for the excesses of those who followed is akin to blaming Jesus for the Inquisition. I know that is a slightly over the top comparison, but I think it makes the point rather dramatically. I for one have no desire to be locked in by the tenets of one approach over another. I think we all recognize that students of all ages benefit from a variety of approaches.
speduktr Yes, and adult and children’s attention spans are considerably different–I love a 40-minute lecture by a knowledgeable teacher/professor, sometimes even if they have a boring delivery. But an 8-year old? The “glaze-over” comes much faster. But I think anyone’s writing or speech, regardless of its truth, just bounces off impenetrable ideological minds. CBK
Ponderosa, about a decade ago, I did a study of Core Knowledge schools and their methods of instruction. I was on the board of E.D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge Foundation.
To my surprise, I learned that without exception, Core Knowledge teachers were using project-based methods to teach academic content. Children were engaged in games, in building models of Greek and Roman cities, in debating and playing and acting out.
Not a single school reported that they were employing teacher lectures as their primary mode of instruction.
I don’t remember where I published it. Will try to find it.
Here’s Finn, the Play Nazi:
“We also have ample evidence that while “playful teaching and learning” does little harm to middle-class kids with support and structure in the rest of their lives, for children from troubled circumstances it’s a recipe for failure. Many such youngsters already have plenty of “play” of various sorts in their lives, even a corrupted sort of “natural state,” but precious little formal learning—and few of the other benefits (character formation, self-discipline, citizenship, etc.) that also flow from purposeful adult direction.
So, to paraphrase: the feral offspring of our inner-cities’ homeless, addicts, and gang members get ENOUGH play already, roaming the streets unsupervised & committing petty crimes. No school play for those little monsters! Straightjacket their butts into no-excuses charters, force-feed them some formal learning, & test the living daylights out of them.
What is the matter with this man? It doesn’t even make sense: as he implies, that’s not the sort of “play” we’re talking about. Hardly obviates the need for unstructured play, outdoors & in, on safe school grounds monitored by trained educators – which BTW is interspersed w/”formal learning.” Not to be confused w/directed lecture from commercially-canned scripts delivered by newbie TFA’s.
Charming generalization of the children of low-income families, isn’t it? I suspect a much larger number are simply parked in low-stim but comparatively safe indoor settings, monitored by older sibs while both parents are working multiple min-wage gigs.
Dr. Ravitch stated,
“Noted conservative Reformer Checker Finn enjoyed the book but thought it smacked too much of Dewey and Rousseau. ( https://www.educationnext.org/more-play-will-save-our-schools-book-claims-review-let-the-children-play-sahlberg-doyle/ ) Play may be fine for our children, he says, but not for poor children, who need to raise their test scores. No play for them! Ugh! Sahlberg and Doyle do not agree either. They argue that children need to run, jump, imagine, sing, dance, and play-act, whatever their circumstances. It’s called childhood, and all children should have one, not just those who are privileged.”
I would rather listen to Dewey, Shlberg and Doyle than Chester Finn. With Chester Finn at the helm our children would regress academically. Poor children above all need to move and apply what they have been taught and that is done via play for the young especially.
My granddaughter who is still two has learned to count to 10, sings nursery songs, use the potty, learn the alphabet via rote, but most especially she is a problem solver. The majority of her learning time is not dominated by direct teaching but learning by doing (Play)time. No direct teaching-only applying what she heard and observed. From the time she could role play, her grandfather got down on the floor with her and played dolls with her. Asking pertinent questions helped her to relate his question to the play; e.g. Grandpa would ask, “Is your baby sick? Did you take her temperature?” And the two-year old takes out her play stethoscope like her doctor does and puts her make-shift stethoscope to her ears etc. “Obviously the questions for Claire give her pause to solve the problem at hand, and by solving the problem Claire is obviously engaged in learning.
Throughout their education there are countless ways to get the children to move and get involved. With the primary especially dramatizing stories used in class to teach skills and strategies, makes the problem and solution more realistic. The entire story doesn’t have to be acted out – the teacher needs to be creative. As students get into high school and college process drama continues to play an important part in applying knowledge.
Teachers of impoverished children listen to Shiberg and Doyle – use the “ Miracle- Grow for the Brain” -movement.
PS Ponerdosa, our educational genius, Dewey, made no mistakes.
Diane This is an aside for anyone interested: C-SPAN’s BookTV has an “Afterwords” interview about the knowledge gap this weekend. Here is the blurb and below that, a youtube link to a preview:
“After Words with Natalie Wexler, ‘The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America’s Broken Education System — and How to Fix It'”
10 pm ET Saturday, 9 pm and midnight ET Sunday, 3 am ET Monday
“Journalist Natalie Wexler argues that the U.S. education system can be improved by expanding the curriculum of elementary school students in history, science and the arts. She’s interviewed by Kaya Henderson, former chancellor of DC Public Schools.”