William Doyle and Pasi Sahlberg have reimagined the school: Let the children play!
They are the authors of a new book with that title.
They write in an article for CNN:
When the novel coronavirus is no longer as great a threat and schools finally reopen, we should give children the one thing they will need most after enduring months of isolation, stress, physical restraint and woefully inadequate, screen-based remote learning. We should give them playtime — and lots of it.
As in-person classes begin, education administrators will presumably follow the safety guidelines of health authorities for smaller classes, staggered schedules, closing or regularly cleaning communal spaces with shared equipment, regular health checks and other precautions. But despite the limitations this may place on the students’ physical environment, schools should look for safe ways to supercharge children’s learning and well-being.
We propose that schools adopt a 90-day “golden age of play,” our term for a transitional period when traditional academic education should be balanced as much as possible with learning through play, physical and creative outlets and mental health counseling to provide support for children who will need it.
Play gives children a wide range of critical cognitive, physical, emotional and social benefits. The American Academy of Pediatrics, representing the nation’s 67,000 children’s doctors, stated in a 2012 clinical report that “play, in all its forms, needs to be considered as the ideal educational and developmental milieu for children,” including for children in poverty, and noted that “the lifelong success of children is based on their ability to be creative and to apply the lessons learned from playing.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Keep the vision of the future coming. kudos. Play allows creativity. As a piece of the education puzzle, it should play a role in student’s education for 90 days and beyond.
Theorizing about play in education is a new mission for Project Zero at Harvard, started by Howard Gardner years ago.
I looked at the website and reports about play as educational. Overall there is little about play as educational once you hit middle and high school. That speaks to the pervasive image of play as OK for childen but not for students who are coming of age.
In my experience, experience and studies that are closely tided to the arts can and do invite and require playfulness, and regardless of age.
https://www.popatplay.org
Can you imagine? That’s an experiment I’ll try. We experiment on them plenty. Why not try something truly new that is actually appealing and hopeful?
“Join John Bailey, former U.S. Department of Education leader, White House Special Advisor, advisor at the Walton Family Foundation, and Visiting Fellow for the American Enterprise Institute, and Heather Staker, best-selling author, blended learning expert and founder and president of Ready to Blend, as they share the latest national insights on the return to school in the fall and discuss the unique instructional challenges and opportunities facing educators. Leaders will leave the webinar with steps they can take now to prepare teachers for student success.”
Ugh. The ed reform “plan” is more and more online learning. More marketing.
Everyone realizes they were all pushing this PRIOR to Covid 19, right? That all they did was retrofit the same agenda they always push as a “response” to the pandemic?
If ever play was important… the authors make the point quite well.
The “however” is from the article: “When the novel coronavirus is no longer as great a threat and schools finally reopen…” is a LONG way off.
In most states and regions anywhere close to “hot spots” – social distancing, masks for most age groups, and limits on time in proximity inside with another will dictate what school is (and transportation:-)
The thinking-out-of-the-box has to include what can be done outside and in large spaces: Let kids invent games with no contact, group projects, give every kid a square foot of dirt to analyze daily to learn ecology, “New Games” (remember The New Games Book?), art outside, singing outside (can’t do it inside)…
And Dr. Sahlberg and others writing on this, I encourage the bumper sticker or mantra be “More Play, Less Tests”
Add to the 90 days of play – – – 90 days of one and only one authentic diagnostic test and no other testing that looks remotely like a standardized or state test.
We are a nation that cherishes liberty and independence. With unstructured time and space, young people learn to create and build structure for themselves, individually and socially. It liberates them to learn to be independent. Many discovered that young people had become overly dependent on rigorous routines when their routines were unsettled in March. Complaints of boredom when kids haven’t developed some independence can be difficult. Unstructured time, especially with peers, teaches pivotal lessons. There is a chance to reopen with more unstructured time if state testing remains suspended, taking the unreasonable pressure off schools to over-structure time with “rigorous” (I.e. monotonous and tedious) test prep. If that important work is to take place as schools reopen, the ESSA must be reauthorized without the required annual testing that is contrary to the original intent of the ESEA.
Congress likes catchy names for education laws. They could call it the Every Student Redeemed Act, or No Child Left Confined.
I’m for changing the name of the federal law back to its original —-no BS——title: the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
So right.
If they weren’t BSing to sell privatization, they would have called the NCLB the No Child Gets Any Less Than A Perfect Score On The Bar Exam And The MCAT Every Year In Third Through Eighth Grade Or We Close Every School And Open A Bunch Of Fraudulent, Wasteful, Abusive, Cutthroat Businesses Instead Act.
When Congress gave Johnson the ESEA to sign into law, they were not trying to make a profit for themselves, hence honesty. It’s the best policy.
As an elementary educator I agree so strongly with everything you said. I hope this can lead to an opportunity to increase play, developmentally appropriate practices and creativity at the elementary level. In my district we have recently been asked, if we continue to be remote, how can we assess our students. We are talking about 6 and 7 year olds. The goal continues to be assessment, data and rigor. Any mention of play falls on deaf ears. The vibe is that we are asking to have an easier job and we don’t want to be “accountable.” It’s just the opposite. All the busy work of data collection is just that – busy work equating teachers to bean counters in a corporation.
We need to take a breath and allow for a less stressful learning environment for our young learners – for all learners. As professionals we ARE accountable – accountable to the future of our society which needs emotionally healthy humans. And that begins with play and opportunities to inquire, explore, create and learn together.
If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that adults need play time too!
Yes! The parents in my classroom all had stories of how their neighborhoods became something they hadn’t seen since they were children. Everyone was out and about in the neighborhood, taking walks and learning to ride bikes ….. socially distanced of course – but it was a common theme.
As a physical education teacher I have been saying this for the past 21 years.
Let them play!
Apologies to Neil Young
Fly fly play play
Frolic and roll are here to stay
It’s better to run about
Than to test today
Fly fly play play
Out of the blue and into the black
They give you tests and you pay for that
And once you’re gone
You can can never come back
When you’re out of the blue and into the black
The Test is gone but it’s not forgotten
That was the story of something rotten
It’s better jump about than it is to test
The Test is gone but it’s not forgotten
Play play fly fly
Frolic and roll will never die
There’s more to the picture
Than meets the eye
Play play fly fly