Freedom to Learn

The roles of play and curiosity as foundations for learning.

by Peter Gray

The Value of Play IV: Play is Nature’s Way of Teaching Us New Skills

By Peter Gray on January 1, 2009 in Freedom to Learn

Play is nature's way of assuring that young mammals, including young humans, will practice and become good at the skills they need to develop in order to survive and thrive in their environments. In this essay I explain how the "triviality" of play suits it for its serious educative purpose. Read More

Getting kids playing again!

Submitted by Tim Magner on January 1, 2009 - 12:38pm.

Peter,
Even if I weren't a BC grad, I'd tell you this article is well-done. I'm an environmental educator and like the works of place-based educators like David Sobel and Richard Louv. You take their thinking deeper, adding perspective to the importance of play.

This gives me more ammo in my fight to help get kids outside and playing!

Cheers,
Tim Magner
"Growing Green Minds"

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Getting kids outside

Submitted by Peter Gray on January 13, 2009 - 2:23pm.

Thanks, Tim. Did you read my October 8 posting, in which I take exception to Richard Louv's "No Child Left Inside" initiative? I'd be curious to know what your reaction to it. -Peter

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PBL

Submitted by Anonymous on January 10, 2009 - 2:14pm.

Just curious, what is your opinion on project-based learning?

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Whose projects?

Submitted by Peter Gray on January 13, 2009 - 2:34pm.

Children who are free to play and explore continuously and naturally learn through projects of their own creation. But when projects are assigned in conventional schools as a route to learning, the reaction my be quite different. They "do" the projects because they have to, but they often do them minimally. There was a wonderful Nova PBS television documentary, many years ago, which showed how children assigned to do little experiments and other scientific projects in schools routinely cheated on them. Their goal was to get the "right answer," with as little investment of effort as possible, because they really were not invested in the projects as projects. The assignment of projects as a means of education can damage children's development more than assist it. The main lessons that children learn from such assignments have to do with superficial ways of pleasing adult evaluators. -Peter

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Peter, Thanks for your

Submitted by Anonymous on January 13, 2009 - 5:06pm.

Peter,

Thanks for your response, and also your interesting response to the comment below.

This blog is so interesting - have you ever thought about putting all this together in a book? That is, after you are done playing with these ideas, of course!

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learning under pressure

Submitted by Lou on January 13, 2009 - 7:38am.

everyone who's gone to conventional schools, especially college, knows the phenomenon of working under pressure. and this often happens in jobs as well as school. some people seem addicted to working under pressure, and believe that it fosters their productivity. my own observation is that it does promote productivity of a certain kind. it focuses the mind and encourages solving problems quickly and efficiently. on the other hand, it may not be the best for promoting creativity and deep thinking. i wonder if you could comment on this and also recommend research papers on this topic.

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Producing under pressure

Submitted by Peter Gray on January 13, 2009 - 2:17pm.

Lou,I agree with your point here, and, like most people, I have experienced myself the value of pressure for getting things done. A great illustration of your point, I think, comes from the life of Charles Darwin. For decades he "played" with the idea of evolution by natural selection. He put together mountains of evidence pertaining to it; created dozens of new ideas related to it; conducted new research. But he postponed writing about it. Finally, he realized that Wallace was going to scoop him on the general idea of evolution by natural selection if he himself did not publish quickly. This led him to put together what he called a "sketch" of his ideas, which, of course, was his masterful work--"On the Origin of Species." One wonders if he ever would have produced this work without the pressure of knowing that credit for "his" idea would go to someone else if he didn't put it all together quickly. But notice, Darwin was able to put together a masterly work, under pressure, because he had already, in an unpressured way, thought it all out. He had already done his exploring, playing, learning, creating. I imagine that in putting it together he did also create some new ideas, or at least new ways of expressing ideas he had already played with, but he could do this because 95% or more of the creation was already done. I would not argue that nothing new comes from work done under pressure, but for the most part a pressured state helps people produce when the groundwork is already there. A novelist whose head is full of fantastic ideas, developed playfully, may need the pressure of a deadline to put them together in a novel. Contrast this to what students typically do under pressure in schools. Without a background of creative play and unpressured exploration of a topic, they turn in, at deadlines, papers that more or less feed back, in rote fashion, what they have heard in class, or that paraphrase what they have read in some collection of books or articles. They present, for the most part, work entirely lacking in originality, creativity, or new insights. Of course there are exceptions, and in my experience they are the ones who spent time playing with the ideas well in advance of the deadline. Relatively little research has been done on this, but you might look at the work of Theresa Amabila, who has conducted a variety of studies concerning the factors that facilitate or interfere with creativity. One of her books (I forget the title) is based at least partly on interviews of well-known creative people. They talk about how deadlines and other pressures interfere with their creativity and how they overcome such interference. You might also enjoy Einstein's autobiography, where he talks about how he was unable to think creatively at the high-pressure school where he was first enrolled, but then began to be able to develop insights when he was transferred to a much less demanding school. He finally blossomed when he was out of school, supporting himself at a routine job in a patent office, and purely playing with ideas about mass, energy, light, gravity, and such. -Peter

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Funny

Submitted by wrebraaceve on September 21, 2011 - 10:16pm.

The game helps to develop their own personalities. As you discover the possibilities, limits his own body, you make clear in relation to words, to mimic, with body language ... you develop power from the outside and inside.bancuri
|Hi Guys,
Today, I am here with a good list of Online Games. Nowadays, Online Games are a worth more famous than the Game which you buy….
Even, the oldest ones play online games Just as My Father :P …. I will introduce you with the best 21 online games which you might be playing.
Below is the list of the best online games you might have ever played:-
1. Mafia Wars- A Very Interesting Game from Zynga about the Underworld Dons.
2. RuneScape- An Adventurous Game with over 150 + Quests to solve and 24 Unique Skills to play with.
3. Club Penguin- A Good Multipayer Game where peoples all over the world interact with others using Chat options and Playing Games in the Game such as Sled RAcing with friends.
4. Dirt Bike 4- An Interesting Bike Game for you to pass your free time with.
5. Street Sesh 2- A Good Skate Boarding Game with some Adventure for you to Play the Game.
6. Terrorist Hunt- A Shooting Game based on the Game Counter Strike.
7. Sock And Awe- A Game to hit George Bush with shoes :P.
8. MotoCross Fever- A Bike Racing Game.
9. 3 Foot Ninja 2- A Fighting And Adventurous Game.
10. Become A Waiter- A Game where you become a Waiter and get orders and do a customer service.
11. Blackjack Online- Perhaps the most popular among the games that are played on the Internet . Unpredictability makes the game a real challenge for the players who are left guessing most of the times. Yet it keeps the mind preoccupied and is real fun having a bit of element of luck.
12. Super Mario World Revived- One Of the Great Game of Mario.
13. Who Wants to be a Millionaire- Answer 15 Questions to win 1 Million Dollors Fake but interesting game . More than 1500 Questions to play with.
14. Battle In MegaVille- An Interesting Fighting Game.
15. Cone Crazy- Be A Crazy Man and Crash All those Cones next to you in time.
16. Naruto Arena- A Multiplayer Naruto Game for you.
17. Tom and Jerry- A Strategy Game to trap Jerry.
18. Metal Slug Mario World- Another Mario Game.
19. Street Fighter Flash- A Fighting Game Famous too.
20. Prince Of Persia- A Good and Adventurous Game.
21. Batman- An Adventurous Game.
Here Finishes My List…. Hope You Enjoyed It..
ENJOY!!! jocuri 3d

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The picture

Submitted by Anonymous on November 9, 2011 - 11:40pm.

Is not your property. I know the guy on the unicycle...and he knows about this article now. You might want to use a different one.

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Thank you

Submitted by Peter Gray on November 10, 2011 - 10:17am.

Thanks, friend. I replaced the photo with one that, as far as I can tell, is in the public domain. Please extend my apology to the guy on the unicycle if he was unhappy with my use of the photo here. It seemed to be publicly available when I uploaded it. It's a great photo, and he's obviously a tremendously skilled unicyclist. But, for my purposes, the new photo actually works a little better anyway. -Peter

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Peter Gray, Ph.D., a research professor of psychology at Boston College, is a specialist in developmental and evolutionary psychology and author of an introductory textbook, Psychology.

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