We Don't Need To Defend That

At the bottom of yesterday's post, I linked to an essay by Alfie Kohn that appeared recently in the Washington Post. For those of you who don't know, Kohn is the author of a dozen books on education and human behavior and is a leading light in the movement to return education to its progressive roots.

In this piece, he puts a finger on something vitally important about play: it is intrinsically valuable and we make a deal with the devil when we argue that "teaching music to children improves their proficiency at math, or that a given progressive innovation raises test scores." 

It seems to me that our culture has gotten way off track when so many of us simply don't understand this. It still staggers me that childhood play must be defended. Yet as Kohn points out, even those of us who have adopted the idea of "play" as central to education are still having a hard time turning the children loose in an open-ended, pointless way, but are rather labeling activities as play that are really "teacher-directed and involve little or no free play, imagination, or creativity." 

This is what the cult of "academics" has done to us. It has taken us away from our essential selves. It has made us feel guilty and pressured. Academics is the language of commerce, of command, and of obedience. It robs us of joy, or at least confines it into boxes labeled "holidays" or "weekends." 

This is about so much more than mere education. Play is bigger than that. I would argue that this is why we are here on the planet: to play, to engage freely with creation, to explore it according to our passions, to immerse ourselves creatively and open-endedly with the things and people we find around us, every day, all the time. This is what I learn from children. This is what I find when I look inward. This is what I see when I look at the rest of nature. 

Play is how our souls express themselves. Play is love. And we don't need to defend that.

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