Greg is the author of the bestselling ’Can I Go And Play Now?’, ‘School of the Magic of Children’ and ‘Love Letters To Play’. A passionate advocate of childhood and education done with children not to them, he is also the creator of Drawing Club, The Message Centre, Play Projects and Adventure Island. His work and thinking is deeply embedded in joy, adventure, marvel and play, four things that he believes are equally as important for adults.
Play is who you are.
Play in your DNA and its role in our lives is critical. As adults, we need to play too, and why? Because if play is embedded in our ‘programme’, it never leaves us - childhood never ends.
We might think childhood ends because we now pay bills, have grown up relationships and own a car, but deep inside of us there is a part that wants to play as much as four year old does. Play never left us.
As adults, when we think about play, we are often tempted to consider it as a break from work, as down time or a reward. We work hard and then play is our ‘treat’. This is known as ‘working for the weekend’.
Unfortunately, many adults then bring this perspective to the lives of children within education. We have playtimes as a break from lessons, as a relief from the ‘serious business of work’, an attitude that stems from the late 1900s which saw a shift away from rural crafting and agriculture and more towards the industrialisation of communities, labour and, along with them, schooling.
School transformed from their religious roots into places where the school bell, timetables, and instruction began to dominate as preparation for work in the factories that now spilled outwards across the North, Birmingham and the capital.
When I look around, 150 years on, it can sometimes feel that there’s has been little or no evolution of education since then. Play is still a reward, it seems like it has to be earned, and on many occasions its removal from children can be held over them so that they ‘stay on task’.
Don’t get me wrong, I love school. What I don’t love is ‘school’ - those unfiltered attitudes and biases that sees spelling tests, homework, desks, the school bell, ‘school readiness’ marking, report writing all still in existence.
The biggest bias that I stand opposed to however is the dominant belief that children don’t need to play. This bias stems from adults who have forgotten or deliberately chosen to remember what it is children actually want. And it’s not about what they want to do, it’s about what the want to be. Children are play.
Since childhood is something that all of us carry with us for the rest of our lives, it is imperative that children get to be who they truly are. If they are not offered play for a considerable amount of their time, then they are in danger of having to be someone else - they mask who they are, they hide their true selves so that they can complete the task and please the teacher.
Now of course, we can’t just drop everything and give children play from morning til night, but we can look at how we can make life for them and us more ‘play-full’. And we can do this by reflecting on what play offers children and then tap into that. There are many things that play is but here are three to get us started:
Creativity
Collaboration
Curiosity
So, how are we giving all children these opportunities across our day - whether we work with 0-4s or are in a school context.
How do we offer genuine creativity? Not following instructions to make a set ‘product’ but open ended exploration and re-imagining of materials.
How do we offer children authentic collaboration across their day so they can share ideas and thinking?
How do we ensure that life for children isn’t just a series of lessons in an unending row, but gives them abundant opportunities to wonder and question their learning and their growth?
If we meet children in the space of childhood, we begin to shift away from the 1900s and set out on an adventure with them. It is here that we immerse in education done with children and not too them.
And why should we do this? Because children don’t need to prove their value to adults. They already have a value burning away inside of them: play. If we want that adventure with them, if we take those steps, like so many of you have, then two things can be discovered - the magic of children with all its possibilities and pathways, and perhaps the greatest treasure any adult can find: their own playful child that’s been waiting all this time to live again….
