School play

“ Play is a normal process of the child's growth through spontaneous activity. Joseph Lee, the president of the Playground and Recreation Association of America, goes so far as to say: "Play is thus the essential part of education. It is nature's prescribed course. School is invaluable in forming the child to meet actual social opportunities and conditions. Without the school, he will not grow up to fit our institutions. Without play he will not grow up at all. ”

“ The Infant School of Wilderspin, already briefly described, was almost a dead thing, with its galleries and its mechanical prodigies, its object-lessons and its theology; now it was breathed upon by the spirit of the man who said: "Play is the highest phase of child development, of human development at this period: for it is the spontaneous representation of the inner, from inner necessity and impulse." "Play is the purest, most spiritual activity of man." "The plays of childhood are the germinal leaves of all later life." ”

“ The best discipline the writer has ever seen, in either class room or playground, has been where games are used, the privilege of play being the strongest possible incentive to instant obedience before and after. ”

“ To summarise: play in the Nursery School stage is unorganised, informal, and pursued with no motive but pleasure in the activity itself; it is mainly individual. Play in the Transition Class is more definitely in the form of games, i.e. organised play, efforts of skill, mental or physical; it becomes social. Play in the Junior School is almost an occasional method, because the work motive is by this time getting stronger. ”

“ Nothing can more quickly gain the respect and affection of a child than such participation. Every adult can doubtless recall the extreme pleasure experienced in childhood when some grown person entered into the childish play. In schools, where there is necessarily so much of formal discipline and dealing with large numbers en masse, one of the most valuable effects of games is to produce a more natural and sympathetic relationship between teacher and pupil, and a fuller appreciation on the part of the teacher of child nature. ”

“ We shall deal briefly with each of these in relation to the work of the teacher.
Play: Possibly the lesson which teachers need most to learn is that play has real educative value. Before the school age has been reached, the child has learned chiefly by playing. In play the child gets his first experience in those activities which are later to make possible a happy, useful life in the community. The number of possible reactions possessed by a child of six is largely determined by the opportunity he has had to play. ”

“ The leader or teacher of a playground should approach his or her work largely in the spirit of the host or hostess whose duty it is to see that each individual guest is happy and has opportunity to share all of the pleasures of the occasion. But much more than this is involved in the relation of teacher and pupil. The teacher of games, or leader of children's play, needs, like all teachers, to have a sympathetic personal understanding of the players ”

“ I want to do regular, proper lessons, and to get to the top of the school, and to have every one looking up to me! Then, they play games at school, real games, instead of the stupid ones we play in the square, that only graze your knees. ”

“ The production of plays by graduating classes or for some specific purpose is of course a well-known method of interesting pupils or advertising a school. But recently schools have been giving plays and festivals for their educational value as well as for their interest to children and the public. The valuable training which comes from speaking to an audience, using the body effectively and working with other pupils for a common end, is present, whatever the nature of the play ”

“ More than that, group play has a moral value. Each one must [48] play fair. Those who do not are ruthlessly ostracized, so children learn to abide by the decision of the crowd. While children’s plays should be as untrammeled as possible, it is the duty of the school to stimulate group play by suggesting new games, organizing athletic meets, getting up interclass sports, and in other ways supervising and directing games and sports.
In the course of the child’s life play takes another form, the form of creative work. Boys build wagons and houses; girls cook, and make dolls. ”

“ It has been the experience of the author that discipline in schools is greatly helped by the playing of games, partly because the privilege of play or its loss is one of the strongest incentives to order at other times, but also because of the happy outlet afforded for normal tendencies and the disciplinary training of the games themselves. ”

“ This has been recognized in the study of the play in literature and in the production of the school play. The application of the art training of the school in giving the play its setting and costumes is of the greatest value. The life of a school finds expression, through co-operation of all departments, in its own community theater. ”

“ For the play-ground is almost as necessary as the school, and both are regarded by the pupils as places of loved amusement, where the presence of the teacher inspires no terror, no restraint, but where he mingles in their sports and directs them as an elder playmate, while they regard him as such, and in return love him as a parent. ”

“ The comment, “That is so good, my boy, that I want you to put it on my desk where we can look at it,” will so elate the child that he will work industriously to do his best, and doing his best will keep him busy a long time. When on the playground or in the gymnasium the teacher must see that he gets plenty of “full-of-fun” play. It will use up some of his restless energy. ”

“ The next chapter will show that it has taken us exactly a hundred years to reach as far as public recognition of the Nursery School where play is the only possible motive. It is for the coming generation of teachers to act so that the dream of the Play School Commonwealth shall be realised more quickly. It is a significant fact that the lines quoted as heading for the next chapter are written by a modern schoolmaster. ”

“ During the games of arithmetic, geography, history, or spelling, life is at high tide in her school and the work is thorough in consequence. Work is relieved of the onus of drudgery whenever it appears in the guise of a game, and the teacher who has skill in attaching school studies to the play instinct of the child will make her school effective as well as a delight to herself and her pupils. ”

“ In bringing children into school during their play period, probably the most important formative period of their lives, and in utilising their play consciously, we are interfering with one of their most precious possessions when they are still too helpless to resent it directly. ”

“ Indeed when we consider the leading principle and prevailing sentiments of most plays, we shall not wonder that they are not always thought to be the most suitable employment for youth at school; nor, when we reflect on the long interruption to the common school-exercises, which the preparation for a play must necessarily occasion, shall we think it consistent with the general improvement:—But, to wave every objection from prudence or morality, it may be confidently affirmed, that the acting of a play is not so conducive to improvement in elocution, as the speaking of single speeches. ”

“ The interest of the early adolescent is primarily physical. Most of his life centers in his play and games. Wise educators are using the play instinct as a medium for his education. Manual training is increasing, the formal work of the class-room is taking on the nature of competition and music, even music with its old-time monotony and routine of running scales in the practice period under parental persuasion, has ceased to be a thing of dread, and has become a delightful thing of play—a building of houses, a planting of seeds, etc. ”

“ In other words, the discovery of plays suitable for children is nothing but the extension into the field of recreation of the type of educational resourcefulness which has enlarged the curriculum in every division of the school. The enriched course of training in play should be used for the improvement of adults as well as children, thus making education for play a part of the movement of educational extension. ”

“ In contrast to this barbarous repression are some delightful instances of provision for normal childish play and exercise for such children. In one of our large Eastern cities a teacher was employed for several seasons to play games with a group of children on a suburban lawn to which all repaired twice a week. ”

“ A teacher should be ready with suggestions for new games or occupation of some sort when interest wanes in a game that is being played; but a new game should not be suggested until there is evidence that players are tired of the old one. Do not make the mistake of thinking that children want to play games incessantly during a half-day session of a playground. Children like quiet [29] pursuits occasionally as well as do adults, and it is well to alternate games with such quiet periods and also with marching, gymnastics, folk dancing, or periods of free activity. ”

“ It is easy to utilize this passion very early, turning it in the direction of art. In the kindergarten they have long known how to adapt it in the play which they so wisely interchange and amalgamate with their games ”

“ That is one reason, among others, why the study of child psychology is of such vital importance to education.
The games of later years differ from those of early childhood by the fact that they become increasingly competitive. At first, a child’s play is solitary; it is difficult for an infant to join in the games of older brothers and sisters. But [132] collective play, as soon as it becomes possible, is so much more delightful that pleasure in playing alone quickly ceases. English upper-class education has always attributed an enormous moral importance to school games. ”

“ In the primary grades play can have a large place in the actual work of the school. The early work of education is to a large extent getting the tools of knowledge and thought and work—reading, spelling, writing, correct speech, correct writing, the elementary processes of arithmetic, etc. In many ways play can be used in acquiring these tools.
One aspect of play particularly should have a large place in education; namely, the manipulative tendencies of children. This is essentially play. Children wish to handle and manipulate everything that attracts their attention. ”

“ Each has a one-sided development. Without discouraging unduly natural capacity for leadership, it is well for the teacher quietly to see to it that each child has his chance, both [184] to lead and to follow. Just as the kindergarten utilizes play to simulate the occupations of men, arousing sympathy with them and respect for them, so the school may by proper modification make the numerous group games, in which children delight, a potent means for securing coöperative habits and a general aptitude for social activities. ”

“ Exercise habits and a spirit of fair play must be a part of their training from the early school days. There is no better way of inculcating these lessons than through story plays and games during their first school years. ”

“ Hence one aim of the Kindergarten School is to utilise the play-activity of the child in the development of his body and mind. [29]
The third agency which we may employ in developing the physical powers of the child is that of games. Games, however, are not merely useful as means for the attainment of the physical development of the boy or girl; they also may be made instrumental in the creation and fostering of certain mental and moral qualities of the greatest after-value to the community. ”

“ They are using play, the sort of games they find the children playing outside of school hours, not only as a method of making work interesting to the children, but for the educational value of the activities it involves, and for giving the children the right sort of ideals and ideas about every day life. Children who play house and similar games in school, and have toys to play with and the material to make the things they need in their play, will play house at home the way they110 played it in school. ”

“ Systematic play is as important as systematic work. The best games and home amusements are as valuable to a child as school-studies; in fact, they bring out and stimulate qualities in a child, which no school-study can. Fascinating home amusements are as necessary as school-books. ”

“ As most of these plays are not solitary, they become the occasion for children's learning to adjust themselves to each other, and the teacher must watch that hilarity do not become violence or rudeness to each other, but furtherance of one another's fun; and occasionally, in enforcing this harmony, a child must be removed from the play, and made to stand in a corner alone, or even outside the room, till the desire of rejoining his companions shall quicken him to be sufficiently considerate of them to make pleasant play possible. ”

“ In England in 1917 we have given to us The Play Way, in which one who has tried it gives the results of his own experiments in education through play. Mr. Caldwell Cook was not satisfied with the condition of affairs when "school above the Kindergarten is a nuisance because there is no play." His dream is that of a Play School Commonwealth, where education, which is the training of youth, shall be filled with the spirit of youth, namely, "freshness, zeal, happiness, enthusiasm." ”