The Interplay Experiment

It was 1971, can you believe it, that I made public the startling discovery that kids who play together work together better.

All right, not startling. But at least I got to prove it. (Probably. Actually, twenty-five years is a long time ago, and I can't find the research paper, and don't exactly remember if my memory is that reliable, anyway.)

We put groups of twenty or so kids in this almost empty room. Empty except for four piles of scrap masonite and recycled computer paper, and a big mirror (one-way, hee, hee, hee).

We asked them to build a city for us. That's what we asked. "Could you build a city out of this stuff?" we asked, and then we added, "we'll come back in a while to see what you made."

Some of the groups of kids had spent a couple of hours a week over the last couple of months participating in a program I called Interplay. Basically, this program involved kids in playing games with each other: physical/social games like hide-and-seek, tug-of-war, duck-duck-goose, for a couple hours a week. The rest of the groups were kids who were from the same class, but had not participated in the Interplay sessions.

We gave them fifteen minutes. This is what we discovered:

The kids who had played together, worked better together.

The kids who hadn't spent most of their time stealing supplies from each other. Even though the materials were purposefully selected to be of the no-apparent-appeal-to-anyone junk variety, the kids spent more time fighting over the materials than in building with them. They had divided themselves up in groups around each pile. And in each group, most of the kids had made different cities of their own.

The kids who played together, can you believe it, built a single city, sometimes by connecting individual cities, but still generally all connected into one.

The kids who played together better, worked together better. Proof conclusive.

So, twenty-five years ago, the School District of Philadelphia published my curriculum. A six-volume set of kids games. They published two editions before the money ran out.

Kids who play together work better together. We knew this 25 years ago. So, how come this is still such big news? How come we continue to be surprised by the connections between laughter and learning, games and leadership, fun and health, play and growth? Why are recesses still so short? Why are our playgrounds still so isolated, still so separate from our learninggrounds? Why do we still allow physical education to become physical intimidation? To degenerate into an endless series of no-win tests and competitions? Why do we still have spelling bees when the only kids who win are the ones who don't need to learn spelling? Why do we still make our kids, day by day, grade by grade, divide themselves and each other into winners and losers, achievers and failures, when what we really want is for them to join together into a community of learners?

Why are we still so surprised that our kids spend so much of their time fighting over junk when together they could be rebuilding the world?