“Come, let us live with our children.”
—F. Froebel.
Play is spontaneous self-activity. It is not found among lower forms of animal life. The length of the play period with any species is directly related to the degree of intelligence of which it is capable.
Young children instinctively play activities which become work when they are mature, and which their ancestors have practiced as work. Among animals, play is Nature’s method of training for responsibilities of maturity in food-getting and protection from enemies.
Among the great educators of earlier days who have recognized the value of play as a means of education of children are Plato, Comenius, Rousseau, Locke, Rabelais. Pestalozzi and Froebel were the first modern educators to practically utilize play in the education of little children, and the widespread interest in play to-day is traceable to their efforts and influence.
Play and Work. In play the individual expresses his own desire, unhampered by artificial restriction or repressions, limited only by his own strength, his imagination, and the facilities of the environment. Play is not necessarily easy, in the sense of making small demands upon physical strength or mental energy. Any one who watches children at their play knows that the intensity of their interest and desire leads them into work requiring the utmost of their physical strength, endurance, and skill, and the greatest exercise of imagination, initiative, judgment, patience in the solving of problems; drudgery is performed with relative ease, because it is appreciated as a necessary means to a greatly desired end. There is no value in drudgery as such. It is a part of the great art of life to select motives and activities that are an expression of self-activity, and to perform the drudgery in the same spirit expressed by children in their play. Drudgery becomes irritating when it is not appreciated in its relation to an interest, as when it is a task set by some one else, with no relation to the life of the doer; or is the performance of labor for others merely for pay, without any personal interest in the work or its results.
The child must learn to perform many duties in his own personal care, in the life of the household, the family, and the community. It is of greater value to put imagination and the play spirit into these, to learn to make games of them, than it is to make dull, unimaginative drudgery of them. During his fourth or fifth year the child can begin to comprehend the values of these tasks, in self-dependence, service to others, coöperation in the advancement of human life, and that he has the part of a worker to play in the great game of life.
Learning, intellectual study, art, should by all means be forms of self-expression, a development of personality, a source of happiness in their acquirement,—play in a large sense. If the pupil is unhappy, disinterested, inattentive, the teacher or the educational system is at fault in not having discovered the vital, instinctive interests of the child and his natural, spontaneous way of learning. Better turn such a child out for free play and first learn from him what are his vital interests, and then utilize these, in this play spirit, to bring to him content and discipline of educational—that is, permanent and highest—value.
This ideal is practically possible by studying the child’s instinctive activities and interests at any given stage, and supplying (a) conditions in the environment which permit his full and rich expression of these interests; (b) content or goals that have permanent life value; (c) increasingly difficult and more complex conditions and problems, so that the child is advancing in skill and ability.
For example: The baby likes to handle objects. Cultivate this play interest educationally by giving him objects illustrating a great number of shapes and sizes. Utilize his love of sound by letting him hear, every day if possible, some good music. The three-year-old child loves to dramatize. Teach him good manners and courtesies in playing “tea-party” and “visiting”; instruct him in simple first aid and hygiene through playing “doctor.” Later, tell him great stories from the myths, from history, from classic literature, that he can “play out.”