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Play is Disappearing
March 27, 2009
I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.
-Lao Tzu
-Lao Tzu
- On a typical day, kindergartners in Los Angeles and New York City spend four to six times as long being instructed and tested in literacy and math (two to three hours per day) as in free play or “choice time” (30 minutes or less).
- Standardized testing and preparation for tests are now a daily activity in most of the kindergartens studied, despite the fact that the use of most such tests with children under age eight is scientifically invalid and leads to harmful labeling.
- In many kindergarten classrooms there is no playtime at all. Teachers say the curriculum does not incorporate play, there isn’t time for it, and many school administrators do not value it.
Child development experts have been raising alarms about the increasingly didactic, test-driven, and joyless course of early childhood education. “These practices, which are not well grounded in research, violate long-established principles of child development and good teaching,” states the Alliance’s report. “It is increasingly clear that they are compromising both children’s health and their long-term prospects for success in school.”
For great resources on the importance of play, check out the new Exchange CD book, The Value of Play. This CD book, which Exchange developed in partnership with the HighScope Educational Research Foundation, includes over 90 Exchange and HighScope articles by play authorities including David Elkind, Jim Greenman, Elizabeth Jones, Margie Carter, Amelia Gambetti, Ed Klugman, Beth Marshall, Karen Stephens, and Rusty Keeler on the following topics:
- The Purpose of Play
- Advocating for the Value of Play
- Play in Practice
- Taking Play Outdoors
- Play Materials
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Comments (8)
Displaying 5 of 8 Comments [ View all ]Independent Consultant
Pittsburgh, PA, United States
Unfortunately I have witnessed the crisis in the Kindergarten first hand. I retired 3 years ago when I saw the joy in learning being destroyed by those who thought they were doing what is best for education. Throughout my thirty-six year career, I fought for what I felt was best for children. When edicts were being passed forcing teachers to spend a minimum of 90 minutes a day in direct literacy instruction, when rest time was outawed in many schools, blocks and housekeeping centers were removed from the kindergarten classroom and teachers were forced to follow scripts and were denied the joy of providing meaningful fun loving activities in place of rote drill skills, it was time to retire. How I miss the classroom. I have been volunteering and substitute teaching only to observe and experience more and more developmentally inappropriate kindergarten classrooms and children who are rebelling against the system through inappropriate behavior. As a former President of the Pittsburgh Association of Kindergarten Teachers, I am ready and able to do what it takes to give our kindergarten students the type of kindergarten program, they deserve and need. I have alerted members of my school board as well as our School Superintendent. So far no one has responded. I think we need to go on Oprah and state our case. I can remember protesting Kindergarten Mid-Terms and Finals. I won my case with the Union in 1989 only to see the struggle reappear with NCLB. Now we have more than Midterms and Finals. We have testing, testing, testing, and little time for instruction and learning through play.
Alliance for Childhood
New York, New York, United States
To Maris, Ellen, and others who feel the same way: Your frustration is why we wrote "Crisis in the Kindergarten." We wanted to give parents, teachers, and advocates for humane and effective early education some ammunition.
Ellen is right. We have to stop talking just to each other. Call up your local newspaper, radio station, TV news outlet. Tell them they are missing an important story and you will help them get it. Link them to "Crisis in the Kindergarten" at www.allianceforchildhood.org and tell them that the future health and school success of our children are at stake.
Then get your colleagues, students, and friends to do the same thing. If enough people do it, we can make change happen.
Ed Miller
Alliance for Childhood
Yuba City, CA, United States
I agree with Ellen completely. In fact, I decided to comment to say this very type of thing. I know, believe, and understand the importance of play. What do I do? I do want to make my voice heard. I want to be loud, louder, loudest. I believe to really make any of these studies meaningful, we must develop a plan and implement it. Me telling my college students the importance of play is a small (important) part of the process.
I'm not sure how to get this started but am willing to be a part of the process.
What to do?
Hilltop Early Childhood Services
United States
As a supervisor of graduate student teachers at CUNY, I go into many kindergarten classrooms. I see little or no play and little or no enjoyment. In lessons where there could be choice, there is none.
I'm so sick of study after study validating the importance and benefits of play, schools violating everything we know and value, and early childhood educators wringing their hands and crying to each other.
Why aren't thousands of ECE people writing letters to legislators and media people? Why are we not marching in the streets to save our country's young children? I've been told it's because jobs are so hard to get these days.
Where are the petitions, the blogs, the LOUD and LOUDER voices of all of us???
So NAEYC's PDI is about play. We get together and agree with ourselves. I like going to PDI. I think I'm going to skip it this year - can't take the agida.
Where's the action? What are we going to actually DO to save the children??????
United States
Great post or a really important report. The Alliance is releasing a 8 page summary next week, which will be a useful piece for folks. Such an important issue.
I just kicked off a series on this issue on my blog, The Grass Stain Guru. I hope you & your readers stop by and look at the comments as well, including one of the co-authors of the report, Ed Miller.
http://bit.ly/40JWJ
Best- Bethe
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