William Doyle and Pasi Sahlberg have a proposal for what children should do after the pandemic: Play.
They write at CNN.com:
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.
William Doyle 
Pasi SahlbergAs 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.
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.
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has also reported “substantial evidence that physical activity can help improve academic achievement,” and “can have an impact on cognitive skills and attitudes and academic behavior,” including concentration and attention. Regular physical activity like recess and physical education, the CDC researchers noted, also “improves self-esteem, and reduces stress and anxiety.”
This is especially relevant for a student population that may face a tidal wave of mental health challenges in the wake of the pandemic. Data from the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report detailed that, as of 2016, 1 in 6 children ages 2 to 8 years of age had a diagnosed mental, behavioral or developmental disorder. And a study in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology revealed that from 2009 to 2017, depression surged 69% among 16- to 17-year-olds.
A 90-day “golden age of play” school re-entry period would help ease children back into the school setting, while providing physical and creative outlets to allow them to calm their stress and thrive with their peers and teachers. But what exactly would this program look like?It should look like a child’s dreams. A time of joy, movement, discovery and experimentation without fear of failure; a time when every student should enjoy comfort, safety, and socialization with peers and warm, caring adults.
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
Greetings! I could not agree more. Play time needs to be infused into daily activities in school. I have quoted the AAP numerously on the importance of play in children’s development. My book from Roots o Wings also speaks to the role of play. By the way, America lost out by not selecting Dr. Leslie Fenwick
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Santa Claus: A Brief History | Bob Shepherd
Every year, around Christmas, some newspaper runs a story saying that Santa Claus was invented by the Coca Cola Company. But there’s a problem with those stories. They aren’t true. Back in the 1931, the soft drink company did hire an artist named Haddon Sundblom to create Christmas ads. Those ads pictured a plump, jolly Santa with rosy cheeks, a red suit, and a white beard. The Santa ads were a big hit. Coca Cola created new Santa ads every year until the 1960s. A myth was born that Santa was created by Coca Cola.
However, long before the Coca Cola ads, Santa Claus had already appeared in other illustrations, wearing a red suit and a beard. For example, Norman Rockwell painted a red-suited, white-bearded Santa for a 1921 magazine cover. That cover appeared ten years earlier than did the first of the Coca Cola Santas. Coca Cola didn’t invent Santa. It didn’t even create the image of him that most of us are familiar with. So, if Coke didn’t invent Santa, who did? The answer turns out to be odd and interesting.
About 1,800 years ago, people in Southern Europe were already giving gifts at Christmas. They were imitating the gift-giving three wise men in the Bible. Some early Church leaders didn’t like this. They thought that all that gift-giving had gotten out of control. They would be completely blown away if they lived today!
At the same time, in Northern Europe, there was a myth about the Norse God Odin. People said that every year, in the dead of winter, Odin would ride through the sky on his horse. He would bring gifts and punish the wicked. Odin wore a fur coat and had a big beard. In the same part of Europe, people told stories about little bearded elves, or gnomes, called tomtar. They wore green coats, played tricks on people, and brought presents.
About 1,700 years ago, there lived in Turkey a man named Nicholas. He became an important leader, a bishop in the Catholic Church. After Nicholas’s death, the Church made him a saint. This was a very high honor. They also created a holy day (e.g., “holiday”), on December 6, to celebrate him. It was called Saint Nicholas’s Day. Many stories were told about Saint Nicholas. Some told about how he protected children. People started telling stories about how Saint Nicholas would come on December 6 to bring presents to nice children and switches or coal to naughty children. In some of these stories, bad boys and girls would be carried away by a monster called the Krampus. In recent years, the Dutch version of Krampus, Black Peter, has become a subject of much controversy. Later on, Saint Nicholas’s Day was moved to December 25, the same day as Christmas.
People continued to tell stories about Saint Nicholas bringing presents on Christmas, and in different countries, his name was slightly different. In England he was called Father Christmas. In France he was Pere Noel. In the Netherlands, Saint Nicholas was pronounced Sinterklaas. The old stories about Odin and the tomtar got combined with stories about Sinterklaas. Sinterklaas was imagined as a little elf man who would ride through the air and bring presents. He was often pictured as wearing a fur-lined coat and having a beard. So, Sinterklaas was a little like Saint Nicholas. He was a little like Odin. And he was a little like the elves.
When people from Northern Europe came to North America, they brought their ideas about Sinterklaas with them. By 1773, some people had already changed the name to Santa Claus. In 1809, a writer named Washington Irving wrote a book in which he told about a jolly Saint Nicholas. In Irving’s book, Nicholas had a big belly and wore a green coat. In 1821, a poem called “Old Santeclaus” was published in America. The poem pictured him riding in a sleigh pulled by reindeer. Where did the idea of the reindeer come from? Well, in Lapland, reindeer are used to pull sleds called pulks. Lapland is in the far northern part of Europe. The writer was telling a Northern European story and added this detail to it.
Modern ideas about Santa Claus were probably most influenced by a poem called “A Visit from St. Nicholas.” This poem, also known as “The Night before Christmas,” was published in 1823. The poem tells about Santa coming to a house on Christmas Eve. In the poem, a man is awakened by a noise. He runs to the window and looks out. There he sees a little sleigh pulled by “eight tiny reindeer.” The poem even gives names to the reindeer. They are called Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Conner, and Blitzen. The sleigh lands on the roof. Then its “little” driver comes down the chimney. He is jolly and plump and dressed in fur. He has a pack full of toys. And he is said to be an “elf.” When he laughs, his tummy shakes “like a bowl full of jelly.” He fills the children’s stockings and disappears up the chimney again. In drawings made by the illustrator Thomas Nash in the late 1800s, Santa grew taller. He was no longer a little elf but the size of a full-grown man. Nash also gave Santa’s address as the North Pole. Another part of the Santa legend was born.
In the late nineteenth century, postcards were in vogue, and at wintertime, people often sent postcards featuring scenes from the far European north—from Lapland. The shamans of Lapland used the red and white Amanita muscaria mushroom in their rituals. They would dress in red coats in imitation of the mushroom. They were typically white-bearded old men. They smoked pipes. They would get into their sleighs, pulled by reindeer, and travel to the woods and then trudge through the snow with a sack across their backs, to gather the mushrooms. These mushrooms induce hallucinogenic visions. However, they are poisonous if eaten directly. The shamans had a workaround. They would feed the mushrooms to their reindeer. Then, they would drink the reindeer urine, and visions (of sugarplums?) would dance in their heads. Sound familiar?
Many streams can run together to make one river. In the same way, many ideas from two thousand years of history ran together to create the story of Santa Claus.
In 1897, a little girl named Virginia O’Hanlon wrote a letter to a newspaper in New York. She said, “Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?” A newspaper editor named Frank Church wrote this famous reply:
Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist. . . . How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance. . . . He lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia . . . he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.
Bob,
My French students get a big kick when I teach them about Pere Fouettard, too!
LOL!!!! That’s wonderful, Mamie!!!
Thank you for putting this all in a timeline! I have heard many of these little “snippets” of how we’ve gotten to our modern day Santa Claus story but I’ve never been able to piece it all together for myself. Same thing with the story of “why” we have a decorated tree in our house for the holiday?….a Pagan tradition (the souls of dead loved ones resided in trees and family would bring the tree inside to celebrate the Winter Solstice?) adopted into Christianity and coming to America via the German immigrants is about all I know. Have a wonderful holiday!
Blessings upon, and a very merry Christmas to, Drs. Doyle and Sahlberg, to Diane, and to all the members of her salon!
Let the children play.
As the American Academy of Pediatrics has noted, “Cognitive processing and academic performance depend on regular breaks from concentrated classroom work. This applies equally to adolescents and to younger children.”
Unfortunately, politicians and administrators do not always follow science and experts. In elementary schools before the accountability craze, teachers often took students out for a twenty minute playground break in both the morning and afternoon. Today many students only have the twenty minutes after their lunch to play, and some schools do not even allow for that. In the north when temperatures dip below freezing, students often spend recess in classrooms instead of going outside. They may be cooped up inside for a month or even longer. Classroom play is a poor substitute for outdoor play where children can get lots of large muscle exercise. In some places even PE classes have been eliminated, and the result is more sedentary, unhappy children.
Or, we could hook students up to galvanic skin response bracelets and retinal scanners to monitor moment by moment their gritful attendance to Common [sic] Core [sic] State [sic] Standards [sic] exercises in preparation for the pre-benchmark test given before the benchmark test in preparation for the Big Test and then post their data on a data wall and continue with the psychological beatings until morale improves. Just ask the folks at the Fordham Institute for Ensuring Big Paychecks for the Officers of the Fordham Institutes! All tests, all the time! If we don’t do this, the economy of the nation will implode like an aged star! Competency-based education and standardized testing for fetuses!
Twenty minutes is not long enough for “play”. It takes 5-10 minutes for children to organize and team up. It takes another 5-10 minutes to decide on the rules of play. This leads to maybe 5 minutes of actual play time before the kids have to line up to go back inside. This is done for a reason…..less physical interaction of children means less visits to the office for minor behavior infractions AND less chance that a child will be hurt on the playground and require a nurse that is most likely covering 2-3 schools per day. This news came from the Principal and teachers when my children were in ES when I got angry that recess went from 30 mins to 20 mins. “You reap what you sow”…..we now have at least 2 generations of young adults who are unable to resolve normal conflict without physical or verbal abuse (more bullying). Let the children play! Recess should be at least an hour per day for ES children.
That’s a NSS statement.
Except that they need to play now, all the more! All ages K-12.
The young married couple that bought the house across the street from mine a couple of months ago have several grade-school age children, brothers and sisters, and I hear them playing in their backyard every day. I can’t see them, but when I’m working in my garage woodshop, I can hear their laughter. When it’s time for the youngest ones to take their afternoon nap, I’ve heard them protesting with tears, too.
Since they’ve moved in, they have left their windows open to let the fresh air in, something I seldom do.
Having a fenced-in back yard offers their children a place to play together as a family. Too bad every child doesn’t have that opportunity.
Never do I hear on this blog or elsewhere in the EduSphere: “kids need to learn geography or great American authors or chemistry…”. When did assuring playtime become the highest purpose of school? Anti-intellectualism thrives as never before.
Ponderosa, you hear it from me in all my books. Students need to learn history, warts and all. They need to read great literature. They need the arts. They need to engage in science. All children need a rich and exciting education. Methods left to teachers. And they need time to play, to fool around, to daydream, to imagine. Not either-or.
Some of history’s greatest inventors, artists, writers, scientists, etc. have spoken about how play, dreams, meditation, imaginative process and release of the “rational” mind ( in whatever form worked for them) have helped them in their careers. You can know all the facts in the world but then what? What do you do with it all? How does that information get combined to form something new and creative? Look to your own personal experience. When have you been at your most creative? I can’t tell you how many times answers have come to me in dreams or when I was going for a walk or when I was “playing.” My mind wasn’t on my issue or problem at all but I’d be drawing or painting and BOOM! the answer would be there. But I wouldn’t wait for our education system to recognize this at all. I’ve pretty much come to think that, in most cases, the greatest creative people have accomplished what they have IN SPITE OF their institutional education not because of it. 😦
Diane, yes I know you believe in academics, but, in the EduSphere, academics is so often treated as the less favored step child at best, a bogeyman at worst.
Mamie, your disparagement of the traditional curriculum is boilerplate in the EduSphere. That’s a problem. Schools should champion academics! Instead we belittle them.
This teacher is not embarrassed to do full- throated teaching of academics:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/priceless-lessons-from-my-sixth-grade-english-teacher/2020/12/24/ab8842b2-4545-11eb-975c-d17b8815a66d_story.html
By the way, I think Sahlberg consistently misrepresents the Finnish school model. He ascribes its excellence to its progressive aspects, when it’s the core of traditional elements that give it its strength.
Ponderosa,
Should students have to just work all day learning their subjects or should they get some time to just let go a little and play? Do you work all day without taking any time out for enjoyment and a little fun? If so, that must be a very grueling life.
Also, I don’t think I disparaged the traditional curriculum. Although I’m not sure what you mean by that term. If you mean students learning facts in all the subjects, I’m all for that.
I am very much pro-recess. But we’ve got to stop talking about desk time as faintly toxic. If it is toxic, it’s probably because the curriculum has little to no real content —doing without learning—a hallmark of modern teaching.
Mamie, you were responding to Ponderosa, not me. I think you are both right. My best thoughts often pop up in the middle of the night. I might be in the middle of writing a chapter and unsure how to put it together or looking for an idea to start a new essay. I used to keep a notepad by my bed. Imagination and creativity are vastly underrated.
I find Gary Lachman’s book Lost Knowledge of the Imagination very interesting. And so many others on this subject.