How America Killed Play—and What We Can Do to Bring it Back
In our last piece from our interview with play expert Dr. Peter Gray, we outlined the five criteria of play. For an activity to truly be considered play, it must:
- Be self-chosen and self-directed
- Be done for its own sake and not an outside reward
- Have some sort of rules/structure
- Have an element of imagination
- Be conducted in an alert frame of mind
When you break it down like that, much of what modern parents think of as play doesn't actually qualify. The truth is play has been gradually declining for the past five or six decades, but it seems to have come to a head in the last 10 years. According to the Child Mind Institute, American kids now spend an average of just 4-7 minutes a day on unstructured outdoor play, and elementary schools across the country are reducing or entirely eliminating recess. Play is an absolutely critical part of our youth, as it develops life skills in a way which is very hard to replicate elsewhere. How did this crucial component of the human experience get so diminished?
The 1950s were something of a "golden era" of play. The post-World War II baby boom left no shortage of potential playmates for a kid, and child labor laws passed in the late 1930s meant children could no longer be forced to toil inside factories or coal mines. Schools had multiple recesses throughout the day, the concept of homework barely existed, and the school year itself was about 4-5 weeks shorter.
"School was not the big deal it is today. Parents were not involved. You went home, you were home. School happened at school, when you were out of school, you were out of school," says Gray, a research professor of psychology at Boston College and the author of the book Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life. The culmination of these factors created a generation where kids played for hours each and every day.
"You could go out anytime during daylight and you'd find kids playing with no adults around. Parents shoo'd you outdoors, they didn't want you in the house—moms especially," Gray says. Organized youth sports were still in their infancy, and if they did occur, they were a far cry from some of the ultra-expensive, ultra- CONTINUE READING: How America Killed Play—and What We Can Do to Bring it Back | STACK