Play is Liberation

I didn’t start out my adult life as a teacher. I have a degree in journalism with a minor in English. I’ve been a junior business executive, a freelance writer, and a baseball coach. It wasn’t until I was close to 40-years-old that I found myself with my own preschool classroom full of 3-5 year olds.

I didn’t know much that first year, but one thing I did know was that I didn’t want to spend my days bossing kids around. So I decided that, in the spirit of the grand experiment of democracy, these children were going to make their own rules.

So, on that first day of class, we started in an official state of anarchy.

And sure enough, within the first 15 minutes of class, a child complained to me: “I was playing with that doll and she took it from me.” In a standard school, I would have had to trundle over to the offending party and, in the role of cop, say something like, “No taking things from other people.” She then would have been faced with the choice: obey or disobey. 

If she chose to obey, then the lesson taught was compliance to rules passed down from on high.

If she chose to disobey, I would have had to insist, or resort to force, or threaten her with a punishment.

I didn’t want to be teaching either lesson. Unbeknownst to me, I was taking a stand on behalf of liberation pedagogy.

Instead, I was left with saying, “Oh no. I can tell you didn’t like that.” And then to the whole group, I asked, “Does anyone want other people to take things from them?” There were shouts of “No!” and lots of shaking heads.

I said, “Nobody likes that. Why don’t we all agree to not take things from other people?”

And we all agreed so I ripped a sheet of paper from an art paper roller, taped it to the wall, and wrote at the top: Agreements. Then under that I wrote: “No taking things from other people.”

Then a child called out, “Unless you ask them first.”

Everyone agreed to that as well.

Then right there, in the matter of a few minutes, these free children in an anarchistic society, agreed, by consensus, to a dozen other things.

No hitting people

No kicking people

No yelling in people’s ears

No throwing hard things at people

No dumping water on people’s heads . . .

And to each of them, they added, “Unless you ask them first.”

We weren’t, as a society, talking about consent in the 90’s, but these free children were.

There are so many reasons that young children should be free to play. It is the way nature has designed us to develop and learn: cognitively, socially, emotionally, and physically. 

We don’t often talk about play in the context of democracy, but that's exactly what I did recently with director of the non-profit Defending the Early Years, professor, and author Dr. Denisha Jones on Teacher Tom's Podcast. As she told me, when the adults are able to step back to become co-learners with the children, to see children as full-formed citizens with both rights and responsibilities, we see that play is equality. Play is equity. Play is justice. And, ultimately, play is liberation.

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Check out my full conversation with Dr. Denisha Jones on Teacher Tom's Podcast. In these first three episodes I talk with Dr. Jones, as well as "Queen of Common Sense" Maggie Dent, and the founder of Free-Range Parenting Lenore Skenazy. You can find Teacher Tom's Podcast on the Mirasee FM Podcast Network or anywhere you find your podcasts.

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