For hunter-gatherer societies work IS play

In the fifth in a series of articles, intriguingly called Play Makes Us Human, Dr. Peter Gray muses about Why Hunter-Gatherers Work is Play. Like all the articles in the series, Dr. Grey's analysis is thought-provoking and well-informed. In exploring what hunter-gatherer societies think of as work, Dr. Gray writes:

In general, hunter-gatherers do not have a concept of toil. When they do have that concept, it derives apparently from their contact with outsiders. They may learn a word for toil to refer to the work of their neighboring farmers, miners, or road construction workers, but they do not apply it to their own work. Their own work is simply an extension of children's play. Children play at hunting, gathering, hut construction, tool making, meal preparations, defense against predators, birthing, infant care, healing, negotiation, and so on and so on; and gradually, as their play become increasingly skilled, the activities become productive. The play becomes work, but it does not cease being play. It may even become more fun than before, because the productive quality helps the whole band and is valued by all.

Dr. Gray reaches some conclusions about hunter-gatherer ideas of work which could prove very powerful in helping cybercitizens redefine the work-play connection:

• Hunter-Gatherers' Work is Playful Because It is Varied and Requires Much Skill, Knowledge, and Intelligence.
• Hunter-Gatherers' Work is Playful Because There Isn't too Much of It.
• Hunter-Gatherers' Work is Playful Because It Is Done in a Social Context, with Friends.
• Hunter-Gatherers' Work is Playful Because Each Person Can Choose When, How, and Whether to Do It.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Pat Kane discusses the Power and Potential of Play

Play ethicist Pat Kane recently spoke at the Learning Teaching Scotland's conference on "Play and Active Learning."

He offers some profoundly pithy pointers (alliteration is often a portent of playful pondering). My favorite: "play is taking reality lightly."

The presentation is brief (16 slides) and replete with thought-provoking insights about the nature of play. As you click through his slides, don't be fooled by all the cleverness and cuteness. Pat has been thinking deeply about play for a very long time. His thoughts, like a good piece of candy, are rich and chewy - worthy of much delightful rumination. Be sure to check out his brief write-up where he includes a valuable collection of links to some of the sources he used in preparing his presentation. He shares his slides on his site, and I on mine.

Pat Kane: The Power And Potential Of Play

View more presentations from theplayethic.

To get a better feel for Pat, and the experience of his presentation, here's a moment from Pat himself:

"I took an idea of his [Stuart Brown] from the book [Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul] a CEO who gave his employees the permission to fire sucker guns at him for a quarter of bad performance - and twisted it around: I asked them all to make a 'projectile' while listening to me (as crude as a scrunched-up ball, as artful as origami), and then surprised them at the end by getting them to throw it at me in the centre of the room if they approved of what they heard. We had a 'deep fun' moment, as you might say - a space at the centre of the room covered in everyone's particular paper construction, some covered in slogans, some amazingly intricate."

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Early learning, late living

"A lot happens in those early years that goes beyond classroom and curriculum. Unstructured play forces children to learn the value of compromise, how to deal with others who are different from them, the social consequences of treating others unfairly and vice versa. And it extends beyond just the preschool years. At every step of the way children are forced into structures with increasingly less unstructured play time. Even after school children are immediately thrust into more structure — the legions of organized youth sports attest to the virtues of play under the watchful eyes of Little League coaches, with the rules set in stone. It’s always better to be on the ball field with freshly painted lines and adult supervision, the thinking goes, than down the street playing stickball.

"But these same children will get out of college one day and still have the work of the preschool years to do — only the play will be more dangerous. And perhaps one day a whole generation of parents will find themselves scratching their heads, wondering why their children cannot grow up after receiving the best education available."

in "Under Played"


via Streetplay

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

"We are seeking the experience of being alive. The difficulty is that for us to find it, we must not be afraid of life."

"Play teaches that I have a choice beyond survival and contesting with the world. This choice to thrive is based on a trust in the power to love and to give this love unconditionally at the moment of attack, and after the worst of atrocities. The choice to be neither an aggressor nor a victim increases my opportunities exponentially. Only when I stop my dependence on self-defense can I begin to thrive. There is no safety in such a fearful, contest world that leaves little or no room for living the miracle of love. When we thrive we feel loved and are able to give love. Fear may impel us to survive, but it is love that propels us to feel alive, sustains our vitality, and restores our humanity. We are seeking the experience of being alive. The difficulty is that for us to find it, we must not be afraid of life."

Fred Donaldson, Peace is Child's Play

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

"Calls to Action" from The Summit on the Values of Play

The Summit on the Values of Play produced the following "Calls to Action"

From the list of attendees, "create a Coalition for Play to communicate and advocate for a new play movement"

• Strategically grow the Coalition for Play by "targeting others from related professions" and organizations in areas of needed emphasis
• "Mobilize youth and young adults as key players in developing a play movement"

Begin "synthesizing existing research on play as it affects a person's lifelong cognitive, physical and affective development"

• "Identify the costs to society and individuals that result from lack of play"

"Develop a robust national communications campaign" on promoting a play movement

• "Inspire families to change their perceptions and behaviors regarding the essential value of play"

Develop the capacity to "Advocate for legislation in support of play"

• "Change liability laws to be friendlier to play"

"Develop national guidelines for healthy play and healthy communities"

Let us wish them every success.

See this for more.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Crisis in the Kindergarten: A New Report on the Disappearance of Play

I found this report on a site called Alliance for Childhood It's about the Disappearance of Play in Kindergarten. In Kindergarten, for gosh sake!

Here's one thing they say:

"The importance of play to children’s healthy development and learning has been documented beyond question by research, some of which is summarized in this report. Yet play is rapidly disappearing from kindergarten and early education as a whole. We believe that the stifling of play has dire consequences—not only for children but for the future of our nation. This report is meant to bring broad public attention to the crisis in our kindergartens and to spur collective action to reverse the damage now being done."

Crisis in the kindergartens! We have to tell people that kids should be allowed to play in kindergarten?! What hath we wrought, I ask you. Wrought-wise, what hath we?

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Playful Learning

The following was written by Daniel Greenberg, to help people understand the underlying philosophies of the Sudbury Valley Schools. This is the introduction to a longer, and remarkably well-reasoned defense of playful learning:

"Nothing disturbs visitors to Sudbury Valley School more than the sight of children of all ages playing freely all day long. The image contradicts every notion people have of what a school should be. Moreover, it seems to offer proof of our culture's prevailing view that children, left to their own resources, cannot be expected to amount to much, since all they do is play. No matter how the situation is viewed, it doesn't look good.

"In general, play has gotten a bad press in Western society. It is considered to be the activity that is least useful economically, socially, even ethically. It is associated with laziness and shiftlessness. It is the antonym of "work". At best, it is what one does when one has earned time off from productive work, when nothing more is expected of a person; it is to be discouraged at all other times. In the case of young children, it is sometimes acknowledged to be a necessary evil, and much effort is bent towards improving its quality, or justifying it as a partially excusable preparation for something more substantial.

"Yet, there is something very wrong with this picture. It is, after all, a fact that Nature has arranged matters in such a way that play is the chief, overridingly absorbing, activity of human young. It is an equally indisputable fact that the human species could not have survived these past hundreds of thousands -- or millions -- of years on earth if the young of the species were not well endowed by Nature with a virtually irresistible drive to acquire the skills necessary for functioning as effective adults. Moreover, it is during the earliest years of development that children learn the most, and learn the fastest; nothing in later life compares with the enormous capacity of infants and young children to master new material, adapt to new environments, and obtain satisfactory solutions to strange and often overwhelming problems. According to the Natural order of things, then, play -- the activity central to people in their most accelerated learning mode -- must be the most effective instrument for learning. What is going on? What is play all about? Why did it come to get such a bad rap in Western culture? What attitude should post-Industrial societies adopt towards play? This essay is an attempt to provide some answers to these questions."

Read on.

See also The Art of Doing Nothing.

Amen. Amen.


from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith