CHAPTER XIX

PLAY

MOTIVES FOR CULTIVATION OF PHYSICAL POWERS

Recent educational practice has laid great emphasis on the cultivation of children’s physical natures as well as their mental powers. This new emphasis on physical training is due in part to a recognition of the wisdom of extending education so as to include all sides of the individual. It is due in part also to the conviction that the only way to deal successfully with the ordinary work of the classroom is to provide the kind of change and relief which comes from physical exercise. Regular opportunities for play are accordingly provided in the schools of to-day, and an elaborate system of physical supervision is being developed in all the leading school systems. Some review of these movements will be appropriate by way of supplement to the general survey in earlier chapters of the activities of the school system.

EARLIER ATTITUDE TOWARD PLAY

The school of a generation ago retained a good deal of the Puritan attitude toward play. One has only to recall the pandemonium which used to break loose at recess and at the time of dismissal to realize that there was a sharp distinction between school and play. In school one sat up straight and still; when one was free from school one let out all the pent-up inner impulses. The kind of play that was exhibited under these conditions was riotous, irregular, and aimless. Furthermore, the kind of play which was cultivated under these conditions did not carry over into later life. There was no system, no progression, in that play, and no cultivation of the inventiveness so necessary if the recreations of later life are to be intelligent.

PLAY AS NATURAL BEHAVIOR

The change in attitude from that of the old-fashioned school to that of the modern school is traceable in part to practical experience and in part to a general and fundamental change in the philosophy of life. To-day there is the profoundest respect for all that is natural. The theological attitude of medievalism and of the Puritans that the body is the baser part of self has disappeared with the development of the biological sciences. The social sciences, too, have contributed the lesson that all human behavior is in accordance with certain natural laws. The philosophy of naturalism thus accepted has profoundly modified the views of parents and teachers with regard to the play impulse in children.

PERIODS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF PLAY

Not only is play natural, but numerous scientific studies reveal the fact that in the animal world and in man’s life play contributes in no unimportant degree to the individual’s development. These scientific studies have shown that play follows definite lines of development. There is first the play of early infancy, which consists in the rhythmical movement of the limbs and in the grasping after objects which satisfy the senses. This is the period of the rattle. There is at this stage no regard for others, no social interest. Then comes a second stage, where play is made up of imitative acts. This is the period of the girl’s doll and of the boy’s kit of tools. The child’s attention is now centered on others and their doings, and this outward attention furnishes the individual with his models of action. Then come the plays of contest and competition, when the child, now of school age, matches himself against his companions in speed or strength. This is the period of running games. Imitation has ripened into the kind of rivalry which helps the individual to realize his personal powers. Following competition comes the period of team play, in which social union with some of one’s companions is combined with contest against others. The adolescent child is now becoming aware of the uses of social sympathy and co-operation. At each of these stages some of the earlier forms of play survive, and all ripen into the form of play characteristic of adult life, where the competitions are against intellectual obstacles more than against physical. Adult play demands skill and intellectual mastery of complex problems.

When one has learned that there is a natural and orderly evolution of the play impulse, one realizes that it is rational to follow this natural order in promoting individual development. Play takes on a dignity that it never had in the days when it was looked on as an uncurbed attribute of infancy to be tolerated only because there seemed no possible way of eradicating it.

PLAY AS NATURAL EDUCATION

Indeed, the scientific discussions have gone much further than merely to trace the course of the development of play. They show why play is to be recognized as a necessary phase of life. At first the immature instincts of the child tend to express themselves in activities that are irregular and ill-coordinated, but aimed unmistakably in the direction of the later serious activities of adult life. The kitten chases the ball in preparation for the later activities of the hunt. The explanation of this form of early play is that in the young animal’s nervous system there are inherited paths which are ripening into action. The impulses of life tend to flow down these inherited paths; it is nature’s method of helping the nervous system to mature to the point of full action.

When nature’s processes have matured the nervous system, the lines of behavior of which the individual is capable are diverse. Each serious activity of life engages some of the individual’s energy and brings to the point of fatigue a certain group of his possible activities. When one part of the nervous system has been fatigued, there will always be other parts which have not been used. For example, a man who reads for four hours does not use his arms and legs. At the end of the four hours his reading powers will be fatigued, but his arms and legs will be overready for action. There must be some change in activity and some relaxation from serious work. Play is nature’s answer to this demand.

SOCIAL NECESSITY OF RECREATION

In addition to the scientific studies of the nature and function of play appears the sociological fact that the growth of leisure has created a new demand for well-regulated play. Furthermore, the conditions of urban life are unfavorable for some of the simple plays which in an earlier stage of civilization furnished an outlet for the natural impulses. If the environment is artificial, there must be a deliberate and intelligent effort to supply what nature demands but civilization has made inaccessible.

The danger in a congested city where natural play is not possible is a moral danger. There are vicious agencies which are not slow to take advantage of the strong natural demand for recreation. The result is that for the sake of gain appeals are made to the baser impulses of human nature. The success of these unsavory forms of amusement attests the presence of a strong natural demand. The way to meet the danger is to provide forms of recreation which are wholesome and elevating.

PLAY AS PHYSICAL EDUCATION

Finally, all the arguments in favor of play are reënforced by the general demand that the physical condition of children in school be made a matter of especial concern. Play is the form of exercise which serves better than any other to keep the physical system in good tone. Hence the conclusion that play is as indispensable as it is natural.

THE SCHOOL AND PLAY

In the light of these scientific and sociological studies it is evident that the school has a task before it. Briefly stated, this task is as follows: Nature intended that the child should play; play is a phase of the child’s natural education. The conditions of life in cities have deprived children of the opportunity for the free development of play. The educational system must take the children in hand and train them back into nature’s ways.

SURVEYS OF CHILDREN’S PLAY IN CITIES

Evidence that the situation needs attention is furnished by studies which have recently been made. The following quotation supplies one such body of evidence:

In the hour and a half following the close of school November 10 and 18 careful observations were made in all parts of the town at the same time, by four adults selected for the purpose. They were instructed to look carefully through the streets, vacant lots, yards, parks, and playgrounds and make a notation of every child or young person up to the age of 21, observed. The information sought was what each one was actually doing, at play or otherwise, and where he was doing it. They were also asked to estimate the ages of the children observed. On November 6 a preliminary sounding was made by the investigator. Each observer was assigned definite territory so as to avoid duplication and all worked at exactly the same time. The results of these “soundings” have been carefully tabulated and summarized.

Altogether 696 children, 447 boys and 249 girls, were observed. Of the total number, 262 or almost 40 per cent of the children and young people were doing nothing. Especially significant is the fact that 168 of the 262 idling boys and girls were idling in groups. Here is where mischief usually starts. A majority of those walking (203) were in reality idling. Fifty-six or eight per cent of the children were playing football and baseball and 22 or a fraction over three per cent were occupied with other games. A play life the two chief features of which are idling and walking indicates that the community is not discharging its plain duty with respect to the boys and girls.[84]

A like result is reported in the Cleveland survey.

A play census, taken June 23, 1913, under the direction of the Chief Medical Inspector and Assistant Superintendent in charge of Physical Education in Cleveland, seemed to show this same lack of relationship between the school and the out-of-school activities of children. The results of this study are shown in the following table. [Page 272]

CONCLUSIONS DRAWN FROM THIS CENSUS

1. That just at the age (under 15) when play and activity are the fundamental requirements for proper growth and development 41 per cent of the children seen were doing nothing. The boy without play is father to the man without a job.

2. Fifty-one per cent of all the children seen were in the streets, in the midst of all the traffic, dirt, and heat, and in an environment conducive to just the wrong kind of play.

RECORD OF 14,683 CLEVELAND CHILDREN

=================================================================== | | BOYS | GIRLS | TOTAL —————————-—————————+———————————————-——————-+——————-+——————-+——————- Where they were |On streets | 5,241 | 2,558 | 7,799 seen |In yards | 1,583 | 1,998 | 3,581 |In vacant lots | 686 | 197 | 883 |In playgrounds | 997 | 872 | 1,869 |In alleys | 413 | 138 | 551 | | | | What they were |Doing nothing | 3,737 | 2,234 | 5,971 doing |Playing | 4,601 | 2,757 | 7,358 |Working | 719 | 635 | 1,354 | | | | What games they |Baseball | 1,448 | 190 | 1,638 were playing |Kites | 482 | 49 | 531 |Sand piles | 241 | 230 | 471 |Tag | 100 | 53 | 153 |Jackstones | 68 | 257 | 325 |Dolls | 89 | 193 | 282 |Sewing | 14 | 130 | 144 |Housekeeping | 53 | 191 | 244 |Horse and wagon | 89 | 24 | 113 |Bicycle riding | 79 | 13 | 92 |Minding baby | 19 | 41 | 60 |Reading | 17 | 35 | 52 |Roller-skating | 18 | 29 | 47 |Gardening | 13 | 14 | 27 |Caddy | 6 | 0 | 6 |Marbles | 2 | 0 | 2 |Playing in other ways, |}1,863 | 1,308 | 3,171 | mostly just fooling |} | | ====================================================================

3. That only six per cent of the children seen were on vacant lots despite the fact that in most of the districts vacant lots were available as play spaces. A place to play does not solve the problem: there must be a play leader.

4. That even though 36 playgrounds were open and 16 of them with apparatus up, only 1869, or 11 percent, of the children seen within four blocks of a playground were playing on playgrounds. Last Friday 6488 children played on playgrounds.

5. That of the 7358 children reported to have been playing, 3171 were reported to have been playing by doing some of the following things: fighting, teasing, pitching pennies, shooting craps, stealing apples, “roughing a peddler,” chasing chickens, tying can to dog, etc., but most of them were reported to have been “just fooling”—not playing anything in particular.

6. We need more and better playgrounds and a better trained leadership.[85]

SYSTEMATIZING INSTRUCTION IN PLAY

What is to be done in dealing with this situation? Three answers have been given. First, plays must be arranged in a sequence which will follow the natural order of children’s development, and when this play course is properly organized, children must be given training in play. The training should be of the same kind as that given in any line, namely, such as to stimulate self-activity and full utilization of the teacher’s suggestions. Specialists in the field have found it advantageous to revive folk games and to call attention to the interest which children exhibit in festivals and dramatic representations. In other words, the discovery of plays suitable for children is nothing but the extension into the field of recreation of the type of educational resourcefulness which has enlarged the curriculum in every division of the school. The enriched course of training in play should be used for the improvement of adults as well as children, thus making education for play a part of the movement of educational extension.

SURVEY OF RECREATIONAL FACILITIES

Second, the available resources of the community for play must be canvassed and must be intelligently utilized. In the quotation from the Cleveland survey given above it was pointed out that there are vacant lots which are not used. A study of the play facilities of the community will also show the necessity of curbing those forms of recreation which are undesirable. A survey of this kind should deal not only with the community’s equipment for play among children but also with the play of adults. Such a survey has been made for the city of Madison, Wisconsin, and there is now going on in the city of Cleveland an extensive examination of all forms of recreation and amusement together with an investigation of their effects on the people.

A few extracts from the Madison survey will show the kind of findings which are turned up by such an inquiry:

A study of the various sections of this survey shows that play or recreation occupies a great place in the life of the city. The time, effort and money put into it is enormous. Practically every social organization, as well as the individual and home, is involved in it. A very large percentage of the business section of the city and many outlying business places are directly or indirectly, wholly or partially, devoted to it, as is a large area of the whole city territory. Its influence is far reaching....

The study of children’s activities in connection with the map survey shows that there is an enormous amount of play forced into the streets, even in well-to-do sections of the city, and in other cases into the worst of environmental conditions. There is no leadership or supervision of this play and there are no public playgrounds except Burr Jones Field and two park playgrounds and inadequate, unsupervised school playgrounds, where there is no attractive organization or play to draw the children from the streets to more wholesome activities and influences on the playgrounds. This is physically dangerous and a menace to morals.

The study of commercial recreation shows that the large number of children are involved in passive amusements indoors during the few hours free for outdoor, health-giving activities or when they should be in bed. This is bad from the standpoint of health, the educational efforts of the school, and general social habits or ideals.

The study of environmental influences and a neglect of play show that some of this street and unsupervised play results disastrously, even in delinquency, and supports the claim of many observers that most of the bad habits of children develop in play under bad influences.

If the play of children is to be wholesome and generally developmental rather than inactive or detrimental, they must have wholesome places to play in, equipment, companionship, and at least a part of the time organized play and leadership. In so far as the home cannot supply these demands most of the time—and the larger number of homes cannot—public interest in the welfare of the rising generation demands that the play be centered in a community playground under proper supervision. The supreme need of children of Madison is playgrounds under trained directors.

The recreational needs of the young men and women of the city requiring public attention are of three classes, all of which require places, organization and leadership. (1) They need athletic and aquatic activities, athletic organization and leadership. These activities are wholesome and increase efficiency rather than decrease it. (2) The young men and women need facilities and organization for more wholesome social activities, such as dances. They need to be under the auspices of the best influences rather than the questionable, and it is just as easy to have the best as the questionable. (3) Young men and women need opportunities for, and direction in, the more constructive use of their leisure time. They need places for their club meetings that have a distinct educational value as well as organization and general leadership. Individual use of museums and libraries also needs organization. The facilities for these activities are meager and an effective organization and leadership are totally lacking.

The needs of adults in the way of activities and facilities are so complicated that it is almost impossible to summarize them. From the standpoint of public effort, the main points are provisions for the essentials in the way of facilities, organization, promotion and direction that cannot be supplied by individuals or small-group initiative or enterprise. This requires a public body that can study and deal with these needs. There is still a great body of adult individuals, largely of the untrained, laboring classes, without recreational resources and unprovided for by any recreational agency except, perhaps, the saloon. These men are recreational outcasts; they seriously need a place where they can find clean opportunities for their toilet and bath and wisely organized recreation. The provision of organization is the way to a simple, constructive use of leisure time by at least some of the younger of these men; here is a demand for a new type of men’s club, or a new type of organization of men who have no recreational resources. It is a need practically untouched by social agencies, yet one that must be faced frankly if these men are to gain or maintain any semblance of self-respect and not be a menace to democratic institutions.[86]

PLAY AS PART OF THE REGULAR SCHOOL PROGRAM

Third, the work of the schools should be so adjusted that play will take its place with other subjects as a regular and essential part of the curriculum. This implies not only that play will be given time in the program but also that the same kind of expert guidance will be provided for play as is provided for the other activities of the day. The great value of a varied program is evident to all who have watched the process which has been going on very rapidly in recent years of opening up the school hours so as to include many different types of activity. Play needs not only to be organized as play and to be equipped with proper facilities, but it needs also to be incorporated into the regular systematic program of the school. This statement may be reënforced by extracts from the conclusions reached by the Cleveland survey.

Some reorganization of the educational corps should take place with a view to efficient administration of play and recreation from a broad educational and social standpoint. This would lead to a far greater influence of the school upon the out-of-school life of the community. Through lack of greater influence of the school during out-of-school hours, there is a great social leakage for which the city must pay.

The school is the natural and logical agency for the safeguarding of the great fundamental interests of children and youth. Each year discloses more and more clearly that the school is the one institution we have yet conceived that is best fitted adequately to conserve these interests and utilize them for educational and social progress. Opportunities that came as a matter of course to children a generation ago do not come to many children now unless they are specifically planned for by some agency other than the home. Met wisely by the community, this seeming handicap may, in the end, result in a great and new-found social strength.

Play is more than recreation. If its educational significance is real in the kindergarten period, it is real in every subsequent stage of growth and development. Rightly conceived, play is a most efficient method of education for life, for work, for social service. The fact that we do not yet know how to make full use of play in education need not and should not prevent the utilization of play, to the full extent to which we are prepared, for the tremendous social service it can render.[87]

SLOW SPREAD OF MODERN ATTITUDE TOWARD PLAY

The suggestions just given, if acted on, would completely reverse the attitude of the Puritans, with whom our school program originated. To them play was a distraction, an evil to be avoided during the few serious hours which are to be devoted to self-improvement. This Puritan attitude is contrary to experience, unsupported by science, and disadvantageous for the school and society. To reverse it has required long centuries and will require a more general recognition than now exists in the minds of most people of the possibility and importance of incorporating play as an integral and systematic part of the educational scheme.

FOOTNOTES:

[84] Howard R. Knight, Play and Recreation in a Town of 6000 (A Recreation Survey of Ipswich, Massachusetts), pp. 7-8. Russell Sage Foundation, New York City.

[85] George E. Johnson, Education through Recreation, pp. 48-50. Cleveland Education Survey. Published by the Survey Committee of the Cleveland Foundation, Cleveland, Ohio, 1916.

[86] Madison Recreational Survey, pp. 97-99. Prepared by a Special Committee of the Madison Board of Commerce, 1915.

[87] George E. Johnson, Education through Recreation, pp. 91-92. Cleveland Education Survey. Published by the Survey Committee of the Cleveland Foundation, Cleveland, Ohio, 1916.

EXERCISES AND READINGS

Let the class undertake a survey of the recreation facilities of the town or a survey of the play activities in which its members actually engage in the course of twenty-four hours.

A whole series of questions arise with regard to athletics. Is professional baseball a form of recreation, or is it work? Is attendance on the theater a form of play? The early students of the theory of play spoke of literature as play. What can be said in support of this view? How late in life do animals play? How does play relate itself to business?

Play when considered in connection with school work is undoubtedly in some cases a distraction. Is it for this reason to be criticized? Under what conditions are play and study at odds with each other? Are there methods of adjusting the relation without giving up play?

On the administrative side such questions as these arise: Should all the teachers take part in the teaching and supervision of games, or should a special teacher be employed to have full charge of this part of the school program? Should there be any effort on the part of the school to supervise play after school hours?

GROOS, K. Play of Man. D. Appleton and Company.

GROOS, K. Play of Animals. D. Appleton and Company.

Third Yearbook of the National Playground Association. Playground Association of America, New York City. This contains an elaborate syllabus on play and also a full bibliography.