Freedom to Learn

You've covered it all so thoroughly, all I can add is that these principles obviously apply to the informal play of adults as well. Lots of people never learn the lessons you've laid out here, so they tend to approach things (and other people) with rigid rules, and then can't understand why their inflexibility causes others to take their marbles and go home.

Sorry Peter! Here goes...

"I can imagine many reasons why parents today value formal sports over informal sports for their children."

Do they though? I would reckon that those kids who played adult supervised sports would also be the very kids whose parents are ok for them to play unsupervised.

I would argue vehemently against the formal/informal sports distinction being the same as adult supervised/unsupervised distinction, as you seem to be inferring. Unsupervised doesn't mean the rulebook goes out the window, nor does an adult presence deny freedom of improvisation. You can have highly structured and formal unsupervised games, and you can have highly unstructured and informal adult supervised games.

"Our cultural obsession with schooling has led many to the misconception that the only activities that count in children's development are those that are led by adults."

You got a source for that huge statement?

"All lessons are seen implicitly as coming top-down, from capable adults to incapable children."

Come off it man, you are well out of order here. I don't know a single teacher who would agree with this outrageous claim. I bet you have absolutely nothing to back up this obscene statement. For the nth time, please give up this stinky old fallacy.

"There is a tendency to blame the decline in children's free outdoor play on the rise of electronic games and the ever-increasing seductiveness of television programming."

Absolutely spot on. If ever there were an example of sedentary, adult-structured formalised games, videogaming is the prime one.

"I think the bigger factor by far lies in the changed attitudes of adults, who no longer trust their children to play freely, on their own, outdoors."

From your own source cited on a previous article (Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 5, 68-80)

"85 percent of the surveyed mothers identified their
child’s television viewing and computer game playing as the number one reason for the lack of outdoor play."

"Clearly, the concept of "enemy" or "opponent" in informal sports is one that has to do with fantasy and play, not reality. It is temporary and limited to the game itself. Billy is just pretending to be your opponent when he is on the other side; he isn't in reality."

I'm absolutely sure this is so in both formal and informal sports.

"Formal team sports feed into our impulse to make such group distinctions, in ways that informal sports do not."

I think it is slightly naive to assume that team identity doesn't come into unsupervised games. I recall playing fiercely competitive seasons of games in which we drew lines on race, neighbourhood, team affiliation, school, street, gender etc.

Again, I think the confusion you have made between formal/informal, and supervised/unsupervised does not help here

"Of course, enlightened coaches of formal sports may lecture about good sportsmanship and valuing the other team"

There is no "of course" about it, this statement is untrue. Enlightened coaches do not "lecture" any more than enlightened parents do. It seems you can't help but craft your subjective experiences into universal "facts" as poison in your patter.

An enlightened coach (and by my reckoning that would be most well trained and experienced coaches) has the job of teaching skills, minimising injury, promoting enjoyment and impartially refereeing games.

The enlightened coach in my school has recently helped her group work through their issues with a new girl in their year. The girl has just joined our school after being excluded from two others for her violent behaviour. The girl has aspergers and we have just found out her parents have split up, and that she has a history of abuse from her mother.

In an unsupervised game, that girl would have caused all sorts of problems, and probably ended up rejected from the unsupervised play. Thanks to our "enlightened coach", she has been welcomed in, in spite of the obvious difficulties. You might call it lecturing, I call it bloody good teaching.

In your rose coloured imagination, all the unsupervised children play beautifully together. In reality, the weakest and the the weirdest don't play at all.

"children get hurt less frequently in informal sports than in formal sports, despite parents' beliefs that the adult-directed formal sports are safer."

Could you source this please? You know how cynical I am :)

"When children play just among themselves, however, with no official authority present, they come to realize that rules are just conventions, established to make the game more fun and more fair, and can be changed to meet changing conditions."

Well the rules of footie and of cricket never budged an inch in all my child years of playing! The more informal the game, the more rules you make and break. It has nothing to do with adult supervision.

"Once I was watching some kids play an informal game of basketball."

"But in informal sports playing well and having fun really are more important than winning."

True, but as true of informal sports played in school under adult supervision.

"Which is the better training for real life, the informal game or the formal one?"

Bit of a false dilemma question IMO. You might as well which of these is better training for life: competition/noncompetition; high stakes/low stakes; making rules/following rules

"Real life is an informal sport, not a formal one."

Bit of both, I would say. Both informal and formal sports are useful and relevant. Which is probably why we do both, under adult supervision and without it.

"please, let your child go out to play--with other kids, while you stay home or do something else that you would like to do."

Agreed. Is there anyone here who would disagree?

"In play, no matter how loving your relationship, your child is better off without you."

Sometimes better off without, sometimes better of with. Depends on the situation.

Sorry to be longwinded Peter, I never mean to take so long every time I write here! However, I think that in some respects we're still going over the same ground with respect to the negative image of schools you are dishing out.

Steve

You say:

"Once I was watching some kids play an informal game of basketball..."

I hope you are aware of the irony in your statement that all the unsupervised games you have observed have in fact been under adult supervision all along (at least yours). Observation is supervision, albeit "light touch" supervision.

SuVal School has a greater adult:child ratio than your average state school. I would call this a heavy adult presence, in addition to which explicit and implicit "competition-free" ethos of the school must have a considerable effect on the behaviour in children's play, albeit disguised by an adult imposed "democracy".

Is it possible that the "unsupervised" and "informal" sport you have observed was actually more supervised and more formal than you believe it to be?

Steve

I'd be interested in your take on Carol Gilligan's ideas of gender and play, as written in In a Different Voice. It's been a long time since I read it, but what I remember is, if there's a conflict while boys are playing, they tend to resolve differences according to the rules of the game, but if there's a conflict when girls are playing, they might abandon the game altogether in favor of keeping social relationships intact.

I agree with your point that kids playing will adapt the "rules" to fit the scenario.
My 9yo son recently set up a fairly challenging obstacle course in the back garden. My (very athletic) 7yo daughter and he were having a great time, pushing their limits, trying to time each others fastest speeds, etc. Then the 2yo woke up from his nap and wanted to join in.
They immediately modified the course so that he could have a turn. The big kids did it the hard way, and he did it his way, and they all were giggling most of the time.
The modifications, I should add, were made without any input from me. All I did was put shoes on the little guy, and yell out the door "keep an eye on him".

Emily.

I just discovered your wonderful blog, via hyperlink to your "Why Don't Students Like School" post from lewrockwell.com. For the sake of all children and our society, I hope that millions of people become regular readers and that newspapers begin circulating your posts.

I've been re-reading all your entries in order to do a review article in our school newsletter. Oddly, I'd come to thinking about the distorted sports experience this week, and then returned to find your current entry.

Here's where my thinking is - love some feedback!

Males are hard-wired for hunter/warrior identity. Our current system for raising boys is intensely structured, and overflowing with female energy. The NEED to develop/acknowledge/run through this identity is typically squashed by controlling the environment or the child (behavior management/drugs). To me, the boys who seem "fine" also usually seem more "girly".

Rather than needing (or being ready for) a Sudbury-like environment, I'd propose that some boys who have been in conventional environments instead need to be able to intensively experience the male group activities they missed out on. In the absence of structure. In the absence of overwhelming female (mothering?) energy. Not as a school - as preparation to be able to participate in a democratic school. Sort of a "re-birthing". Maybe a "re-boying"?

As I proposed this and my possible plans for my kids for next year, my husband compared what I was describing to the difference between the "let's all meet at the bball court or baseball field" sports he did as a kid to the over-structured sports that are out there today.

And then I stopped by here...

Once again, you've shined the spotlight on something so important yet so ignored in our society.

I was making notes last night about this very topic...nice to come and read this today. I was trying to remember the evolution of my 8 y.o.'s version of "paper, rock, scissors" which included bombs and other macabre accoutrements that he was adding as needed. The game evolved and changed with his need and imagination. Fun being more important than rules, we went along with it adding our own ideas and "rules".

That's getting into games rather than pure sports, but the approach is similar regardless of what we play.

Anyway, brilliant again. Thoroughly enjoyed the article.

I've been enjoying your column since September. I found the need to respond to this article. About what you said, "There is a tendency to blame the decline in children's free outdoor play on the rise of electronic games and the ever-increasing seductiveness of television programming." I think it is not so much the draw of electronics as it is the fear of many parents to allow their children to play unsupervised. If a parent is working when the children come home from school, most parents prefer their children play safely indoors because of their concern about predators.

I homeschool my children. When we go to activities within our group, families usually set aside time for the children to play after. I've observed many of their games and have discussed their free play with the other parents.

The children always organize their own teams much in the way you describe. I've seen them play games like Capture the Flag where they consider the fairest way to divide up the youngest children. Usually the teams with the smaller children are bigger. In games like soccer, kickball and baseball, leadership roles go to the most outspoken children or the ones who play on actual teams and know the rules of the game. It is true that they spend a lot of time figuring out the rules, but in the end, they all seem to have fun.

Thank you for writing these articles. I look forward to every one!

As a mother of four boys who learn without school or a formal curriculum, I have often noticed the benefits that they accrue from playing together non-competitively (although not always non-aggressively).

After reading your article, and while enjoying some learning of my own in the realm of positive psychology, I came across some research that illustrates another benefit of co-operative play.

According to research conducted by Fraley on attraction and bondage after first encounters, when people who have just met engage in a competitive game and then are asked to rank the attractiveness and how closely they felt bonded to the person they were working with, levels of attractions and bondage were pretty low. However, when people who have just met engage in a cooperative task - people's rating of attraction and bondage go up.

As such, our children have a better chance of developing friendships and good feelings about the children they are playing with if they engage in co-operative vs. competitive play.

I saw this and thought of you :)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6630394/Children-should-be-...

Makes perfect sense if you ask me. Our mother always told us "you'll eat a peck of dirt before you die". (A peck is 2 gallons' dry measure)

Steve

Steve, thanks for bringing this to people's attention. I've read about this theory and research elsewhere; it does make lots of sense. Germ phobia is part of the overprotective approach to children in today's society. We need to play in the dirt (figuratively as well as literally) in order to develop bodies (and minds) that can deal with it in healthy ways. -P

I think you get a little too much into the parent-blaming here without really stopping to take a look at the realities that a lot of us face. As a psychologist you undoubtedly have the income to allow you to live someplace where, if you had children, you also would have more space to let them get out and do things. Many of us don't have that privilege.

It is not that I don't trust my child to play well outdoors without me watching. She's five years old and we live on a major road in the fifteenth largest city in the United States. I don't fancy looking outside my window to see her dead in a road because she chased a ball into the street. People are too busy texting and making phone calls while driving to care what's running into the road.

We also live in a neighborhood of strangers because I am not from this city, and neither is her father. He has friendly acquaintances at work and therefore the promise of a social life. I've made several false starts in getting to know people here locally but it's difficult to do that when I feel judged about every other lifestyle choice I make.

And besides all that, I don't trust *other people* to either be decent to my child or to leave her alone entirely if they can't be decent. There are a lot of--I hate to say it but I can't think of a better word--evil people out there who love to hurt or prey on children. And they don't walk around with tattoos on their foreheads and there is no "type"--they're impossible to identify by sight alone. Even knowing one, being friends with one, or living with one may not clue you in to their nature, or illness, or whatever it is. They'll fool you for as long as they have to.

A lot of people think the world has gotten more dangerous for children, and this perception is frequently blamed on media coverage and characterized as stemming from paranoia rather than being based in reality. I say it's very difficult to gauge this objectively. I do know that people are more willing to talk about child abuse of all types, including child sexual abuse, than they were fifty years ago. The uptick in reporting of crimes against children, then, may simply be due to an improvement in reporting itself, not an increase in actual crime rates recorded or unrecorded. Nevertheless, these crimes are occurring, and it stops being a statistic when it happens to your child. At that point, in a sense, the probability has reached one hundred percent.

As parents we *need* to know what is going on, not because we don't trust our kids, but because we don't trust other adults. When we *do* trust, when we *do* let go, and something happens, not only do we stand to lose our children but we will also suffer social death because we will be blamed for the incident. This culture is real big on blaming the victim or victims-by-proxy rather than providing any real help for them, and it is particularly unfriendly towards families with children. I've seen it over and over and over again and I'm only in my mid-thirties.

It's a shame too. I wish we could go back to a simpler time but the truth is, after we went from hunter-gathering to agriculture there WAS no simpler time. People have been hurting kids all along because there was no social control to stop them until after the fact--which isn't stopping them, only punishing them, and does not protect children at all. That's still true today, even though we've abolished (at least in name) child slavery and child labor and so on and so forth.

And for what it's worth I don't think the lack of unstructured play is making kids fat. Believe you me, if they want to move, they will. We're going through a relatively hard winter right now here in Ohio and if my daughter can't play outside, which most days she can't for very long, she makes up for it with lots of running and jumping in the house--much to my dismay. I'm afraid the blame lies more with diet than with exercise or the lack thereof, and there's lots of research that backs me up on that count. Looking back to my own childhood when I got outside a lot, it wasn't like I was doing high-intensity aerobics in the first place--I was as likely to sit around talking with my friends as I was to play sports with them, formal or informal. I'm pretty sure that's true for most kids. And I was never a fat child. There *are* other benefits to outdoor play, though; you're right about that.

Good article, mostly. I love reading your work.