Making a play for it

"As astronauts and space travelers children puzzle over the future; as dinosaurs and princesses they unearth the past. As weather reporters and restaurant workers they make sense of reality; as monsters and gremlins they make sense of the unreal." 

So says Gretchen Owocki, a US early childhood educator, presumably after many years of observing young children at play. It's a powerful quote that puts play into perspective as one of the most important components of growing up and learning. Children have boundless imagination, and it is witnessed in many ways, but none more openly than when they are at play. Children use their imagination to make sense of the world around them, but their creativity is seen in imaginative acts such as making things, or make believe. A stick can become a Prince's sword or a Wizard's staff, and a cardboard box be magically transformed into a submarine or a castle.

Sir Ken Robinson, undoubtedly one of the most outspoken educational thinkers of the modern age, argues that imagination needs to emerge as creativity, but traditional school systems thwart this process: "All children start their school careers with sparkling imaginations, fertile minds, and a willingness to take risks with what they think," he says. "Most students never get to explore the full range of their abilities and interests ... Education is the system that's supposed to develop our natural abilities and enable us to make our way in the world. Instead, it is stifling the individual talents and abilities of too many students and killing their motivation to learn." (Source: The Guardian).

How can technology change this and improve the school experience? Games played personal devices such as tablet computers and handheld consoles can and do promote creativity. They immerse the learner in the business of learning, without necessarily betraying the fact that the child is actually learning something. It is learning by stealth. Playing games often involves a temporary suspension of reality, and can also engage learners in speculative, hypothetical thinking about the world. Perhaps most importantly, playing games enables children to understand that through failure they can try and try again, and a realisation that perseverance and persistence being important ingredients in eventual success.

Play is important for learning for all ages. But it is especially important for children. It's what they do naturally, so it is also important that play can continue to be a major part of the school experience. It should be a sustainable and ever present feature in all subjects, across the curriculum. Any school or teacher who fails to include this element is robbing children of their right to experiment, ask the 'what if?' questions, and outwork their imagination in creative acts.

NB: Many more powerful quotes on 'play' can be found on this website

Photo by Steve Wheeler


Making a play for it by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.