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GreenMoney Journal - publishing since 1992
Fall 2010 issue
Socially Responsible Investing – Better Companies, Better Communities
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The Politics of Play
Joan Almon
Five years ago, when the nonprofit Alliance for Childhood announced its campaign to restore
imaginative, freely chosen play to children's lives, at home and in school, we were told that
"play" was a four-letter word. "Don't use it," said many of our friends. We thought about it, and
said, "No. We're going to change people's minds."
Despite its importance as the foundation for learning in early childhood, child-initiated play has
practically disappeared from today's public kindergartens, and it is rapidly disappearing from
preschools as well. This trend began more than 20 years ago, but it has accelerated under the No
Child Left Behind Act. The Alliance for Childhood will issue a report this fall with disturbing
new data on what is actually happening in kindergartens and why change is urgently needed.
Public perceptions are at last starting to shift. Educators, health professionals, and parents
are beginning to recognize that play is as vital to children's health as eating and sleeping. Cut
it off and children suffer from play deprivation, which affects all aspects of their development.
In recent months the importance of play has been addressed in The New York Times, on
National Public Radio, and through other media. The American Academy of Pediatrics issued a major
clinical report in October 2006 asking pediatricians to talk with parents about the vital role of
play. Environmental groups are focusing on children's need to play outdoors and connect with
nature, and a number of new studies and books make a strong case for play-based education in
preschool and kindergarten.
In recent surveys of kindergarten teachers in New York and Los
Angeles the majority reported spending two to three hours per day instructing children in literacy
and numeracy and preparing them for standardized tests, but offering less than 30 minutes per day
for play or other freely chosen activities.
Many urban school districts, such as Los
Angeles, have chosen scripted curricula as the primary mode of instructing kindergarten children in
literacy and math, so that teachers spend two or more hours per day reading from a script.
Inspectors come into classrooms frequently, and teachers are reprimanded and even fired if they do
not follow the script exactly.
The publishers of these scripted materials claim that these
methods are research-based. In fact, there is little or no research showing long-term gains from
scripted teaching or other intensively didactic programs in kindergarten. Yet these approaches were
chosen for federal funding under the Reading First program. Recent government research, however,
revealed that Reading First has had no effect on reading comprehension, despite large increases in
the amount of time being spent in classrooms on literacy instruction.
Scripted teaching
began in the 1960s but was largely discredited when the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation
conducted a comparison study of three preschool classes for low-income at-risk children. Two
emphasized experiential activity. The third was a scripted program. The children were followed
until age 23, and it became clear that those who had been in the scripted program had suffered
greatly. They showed more signs of behavioral and learning difficulties than the others, were more
likely to drop out of high school, and more likely to go to prison. Scripted approaches fell into
disfavor until the current Bush Administration began to promote them. In the famous footage of
President Bush being told of the 9/11 attacks, the book he is reading to a group of children is
part of a scripted program sold by McGraw-Hill. The Bush and McGraw families have been close
friends for three generations.
Meanwhile, young children are showing increasing signs of
stress and mental health problems. "Kindergarten rage" and other extreme behaviors have become
alarmingly frequent. A Yale University study showed that the highest rate of school expulsion for
children ages four to eighteen was among four-year-olds. Preschool boys were expelled at 4.5 times
the rate of girls.
The kindergarten picture is growing clearer: First we create
unrealistic standards and expect kindergarten children to perform at a first- or second-grade
level. Then we frustrate them by demanding hours of concentrated work every day to meet these
standards, expecting them to learn in ways for which they're not developmentally ready. We test the
children relentlessly to measure what they have learned, using standardized measures whose validity
is highly suspect. We threaten teachers and principals with the loss of their jobs if the test
scores don't go up. Then we deprive these stressed-out five-year-olds of the most effective means
of coping with their distress-time for free play. Finally, we penalize them for misbehaving and
acting out their frustration and anger. Is it any wonder that, for many children, the first lesson
they learn in school is that they are not good enough?
What's the solution? Adopt
realistic learning goals for emerging readers, such as those delineated by Bank Street College, and
restore creative play and experiential learning to kindergartens. These methods, combined with the
guidance of teachers educated in child development and early learning, provide a foundation for a
lifelong love of learning and a capacity for creative thinking. That is what 21st-century children
need.
© 2008 All Rights Reserved
Article by Joan Almon, Educator and
Advocate for Social Change
Joan Almon is the Chair of the U.S. Alliance for Childhood,
a partnership of educators, physicians, parents, and others advocating for social change to improve
children's overall health and well-being. A major focus of the Alliance is the restoration of play
to childhood ( http://www.allianceforchildhood.org and http://www.indefenseofchildhood.org ).
There are also Alliance groups in the U.K. ( http://www.allianceforchildhood.org.uk ), Brazil (
http://www.aliancapelainfancia.org.br ), and a Europe-wide network based in Brussels (
http://www.allianceforchildhood.eu ). The U.S. Alliance is also part of a coalition to end the
commercialization of childhood, which is composed of 25 organizations (
http://www.commercialfreechildhood.org ).
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