A few months ago, William Doyle and Pasi Sahlberg published their book about the importance of play, called Let the Children Play: How More Play Will Save Our Schools and Help Children Thrive.
Checker Finn Jr. criticized their book in the conservative journal Education Next, maintaining that middle-class and affluent kids need to play, but poor kids need to keep their noses to the academic grindstone.
Doyle and Sahlberg respond to Finn in Education Next in this article.
They write in answer:
Chester E. Finn Jr.’s review in the Winter 2020 Education Next of our book Let the Children Play reveals a startling lack of knowledge of medical guidelines for children in school, including children in poverty.
Finn contends that our policy message, the need for more intellectual and physical play in school, “portends damage to children and society at least as severe as the practices the authors rightly deplore.” The reason, Finn asserts without evidence, is that playful teaching and learning “does little harm to middle-class kids,” but “for children from troubled circumstances it’s a recipe for failure.”
In fact, the exact opposite is true, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, representing the nation’s 67,000 children’s doctors, which declares in its 2012 clinical report on play and children in poverty that “the lifelong success of children is based on their ability to be creative and to apply the lessons learned from playing.”
In the report, the AAP says that “play should be an integral component of school engagement,” and “for children who are underresourced to reach their highest potential, it is essential that parents, educators, and pediatricians recognize the importance of lifelong benefits that children gain from play.” The doctors added: “It could be argued that active play is so central to child development that it should be included in the very definition of childhood. Play offers more than cherished memories of growing up, it allows children to develop creativity and imagination while developing physical, cognitive, and emotional strengths…”
Play is the learning language of children, and a critical foundation of life success. Teachers and pediatricians know that in school it can take many forms, including recess, free play and guided learning through play, playful teaching and learning and experimentation without fear of failure, and creative physical and intellectual expression through the arts and high-quality physical education. All children need it in regular doses, including and especially children in troubled circumstances.
An argument against play in school for any group of children is a reckless violation of the clinical position of America’s pediatricians and an insult to our teachers and students, and should be dismissed as such.
Game, set, match to Doyle and Sahlberg!
This is one of things that is so tragic about what’s happening right now. The complete shutdown of physical play, whether in or out of school.
Even more tragic is that Chester FInn has any influence over children’s education. Why would anyone with half a brain listen to him spout his racist tripe about poor children?
We have 4 -5 neighborhood families that are social distancing together as one because they have numerous children that play together (after a 2 week single family social distancing). The parents are all working from home (one is the elementary school VP) and they are all staying home except for a weekly grocery store run. These kids travel/play in a pack and are now playing all day long. It is so nice to hear their laughter and it’s also funny to listen to them “sort out” their differences during play. They are learning so much just by being free from sitting at desks and playing without adult supervision or intervention.
All children including poor children learn to make sense of the world through play. It is essential to sound human development. I have taught students from many poor, even violent countries. Despite being severely educational delayed, most of the students were extremely resilient, creative and positive. They learned to invent toys from found things in their environment. Most of the students that adapted well also had a stable family. Play is an essential building block of healthy development.
Not just “including” poor children, but ESPECIALLY poor children, need play. Desperately.
Chester Finn understands what a Finn like Sahlberg never will
Finn vs Finn
Finnland is finished
Encouraging play
Future’s diminished
On PISA they’ll pay
We are lucky to live near a wooded area. My kids are out there creating their own little world. Much better use of their times than worksheets.
Amen to that!!!!
“the lifelong success of children is based on their ability to be creative and to apply the lessons learned from playing.”
I would never disagree with the idea that play is important. Just watch the animal world, and you can see youth (very short time in most of the animal world) play like they will one day work. From the tussles of cats to the frolic of the pup, play is the obvious teacher of the young.
What I do question is the ability of any researcher to quantify the definition of “lifelong success” in a “study.” Since we argue with “studies,” this seems to me to be problematic. What lifelong success is may differ among populations. Some families I grew up around saw migration as a sign of failure. You don’t “desert your family.” to go take a job far away. This is very prevalent among poor whites in my area. It is part of their fear, the same fear that allows political leaders to get themselves elected with fears of various ideas and people. More wealthy friends boast about their offspring taking a job all the way across the nation. Most of these people are better educated, encouraged by families that see earning potential as a sign of success, blessed by the broader family as smart, adventurous, and intrepid in the face of challenge.
It seems to me that Finn is correct in that we need to have different philosophies about how we educate various social levels of society. To me, however, it leads opposite the path he has chosen for the children of the impoverished. Instead of trying to make all children proceed at the same pace, we should invest more time and money into the development of the impoverished. We should allow for more play, not less. Poor kids need time to grow into the technological advantages experienced by the middle class, for example. My own experience having limited connectivity has taught this to me.
I did not even need a study.
Where’s our old friend, the commentator B.A., who could always be counted on to attempt to attempt to out-checker Checker by asserting that the beatings of poor kids should continue until their morale improved? This was never funny, though often he (or she) did provide comic relief via the absurdity of the positions that he (or she) propounded.
Thank you, Professors Doyle and Sahlberg!
As a retired elementary teacher, I know how essential play is to children’s growth and development. In addition to the benefits of play stated above, play provides an outlet for children to process their emotions. It is also where they develop their social skills of cooperation, negotiation and problem-solving.
In the school where I taught, we included special days throughout the year dedicated to child-directed play. Children would bring a toy from home (no electronics), and play with their classmates. The objective was to teach children to how to make friendships, discover shared interests with their classmates, and cooperatively and creatively establish rules for games. Teachers were instructed not to direct or intervene, but to allow the children to take the lead.
Play is, and should be, an essential part of the lives of children and adults as well!
Play, YES! I taught grades 7-12 and found ways to include “play” in regular routines, activities, and lectures (which were few). We did mock trials, mock legislatures or city councils, mock assembly lines, field trips. My kids from all kinds of families did well, but most importantly they loved our classes. We took annual picnics, etc. I’m still in touch with kids (my extended families) fifty plus years later. There’s absolutely no reason school can’t be fun, at any level, K through college. God help us when we forget that.
I wonder if Chester Finn, Jr. was every permitted to learn through play. He attended public schools in Dayton until he went to Phillips Exeter (9-12) same place his dad, a prominent lawyer, attended, then Harvard. As far as I can tell he never set foot in a class room with full responsibility for teaching children. He was “well-connected” from the get-go.
http://michaeljesse.net/projects/Dayton/factfiles/people/F/Finn_Chester/Finn.html
Why is it that some leaders who were born into privilege (Roosevelt I and II) seem to understand the idea of leadership as a function of taking care of all the people, and others seem never to understand?
I believe that Finn was a teacher for a very short while. I think he taught at the HS level? He couldn’t hack it. My guess is that he wanted to be the “Sage on the Stage” with “all eyes on me 1,2,3” and the kids wouldn’t cooperate. I don’t think he understands that there is a difference between content delivery and teaching.
Sahlburg and Doyle were restrained in their response. I’m hot under the collar after reading Finn’s review. He twists things around to fit his a priori’s. A dogmatist, not a scholar, who even comes off sounding like a racist/ classist to my ears.
Let’s get the stupid stuff out of the way first.
“…Finland’s vaunted approach to education, which was (for a time) validated by robust PISA scores… PISA scores have slid since 2009…”
First of all: how is 7th in world in both reading and science [Finland 2018] not “robust”? OK, I know, why even argue a silly premise like a “vaunted” approach can only be “validated” by PISA scores– especially in this context. Heck, I’d settle for “pretty good” in exchange for healthy & happy. But I’ll play:
LATE START – PLAY++ – 1 STDZD TEST vs EARLY START – NO PLAY – TESTS++
Finland 2018. US 2018
Reading 7th Reading 14th
Science 7th. Science 19th
Math. 16th. Math. 38th
Where’s the argument, Finn?
On to the outrage.
Finn could be forgiven his garbled concept of Rousseau’s mid-18thC philosophy, if he didn’t make it his primary thesis. The Noble Savage construct which he paraphrases here actually appeared nearly a century prior in Dryden’s poetry (and in Montaigne’s 16thC work, & 17thC French explorers’ diaries)– but not in Rousseau. Finn could have gotten this misreading from any secondary source. Even recent books echo John Crawfurd (1859 writings), who was part of a short-lived racist subgroup in the Ethnological Society of London. All that survived of it was Crawfurd’s oft-quoted but false attributions, using Rousseau as straw man to attack humanitarian missionaries and abolitionists.
I bring it up because Finn is amplifying that old, wrongheaded, slavery-era argument. He’s casting the “play” proponents as foolish believers in the inherent nobility of human nature, while– if I may read between the following lines– pointing to urban street-culture as though to aboriginal violence: “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.”
Wow.
Yeah…isn’t he a sweatie? He sat on our State BoEd for a few years (MD). We have lots of testing, lots of test prep, we’re tied to CCSS….we are Deform World in overdrive.