Play Is a Grossly Under-Utilized Element in American Education and Adult Life: A REAL Wellness Take

INTRODUCTION

Play is an under-rated, under-promoted element of exuberance overlooked in wellness promotion. Let’s encourage children to play more, especially unsupervised, and do a lot more of it ourselves.

Americans young and old are play-impaired. The evidence regarding the benefts of play is overwhelming; the adverse consequences of doing too little of it are well understood.

Not everyone has overlooked the value of play. G. K. Chesterton said,

The true object of all human life is play. Frank Caplan believed play to be man’s most useful preoccupation. If necessity is the mother of invention, play surely is the father.

Of course, some of us are getting way more play than our fair share — if we got any more, we might be prosecuted, or at least reprimanded for fooling around too much. The fortunate minority of the playful surely include AWR subscribers, happy children, all who are demonstrably stress-free and folks who, day after day, experience far more than their minimal daily requirements of DBRU equivalents.

(You can read about DBRU equivalents by using the search function at this site to reach a previous essay on this topic.)

However, tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions young and old, are totally unaware how crucial play is to their wellbeing and thus rarely get their minimum daily requirements of this vital mental nutrient.

These people need reasons and excuses to play, coaching in how, when, where and why to play. They need play therapy. It’s a national emergency, as crucial to the American economy, the global environment and world peace as is removing from office, as soon as possible, the execrable reptilian lowlife bloviator-in-chief whose grotesque presidency might hasten a Third Reich-like Gilead theocracy, if not the Rapture itself.

Apologies to reptiles everywhere if this association caused offense.

EARLY EDUCATION IN FINLAND AND AMERICA

Contrast the educational approaches in Finland and America with respect to this activity and the power of play comes into perspective. The superior results from the Finnish system, focused on play in the early years, contrasts with the stress-inducing American path focused upon test scores. The test score model is a factor in poorer health, among other problems, in the U.S.

Play is a major feature of Finnish education. A recent Wall Street Journal article captured the dramatic differences in a feature article about two professors who took sabbaticals in each other’s country. (See Pasi Sahlberg and William Doyle, To Really Learn, Our Children Need the Power of Play, Wall Street Journal, August 8, 2019, p. C3.)

Pasi Sahlberg came to America from Finland five years ago. Upon arrival, he set out to place his three-year old son in an American preschool in the Boston area. In the enrollment interview, he was asked to describe his son’s preschool readiness, more specifically his vocabulary and numeracy skills. The dad explained that, as far as he could tell, his 3-year old didn’t have much going for him in either area.

The Finnish dad also discovered that tuition at a Boston preschool would be $25,000 — annually.

In America, fragmented and dysfunctional educational systems are structured around standardized testing, competition, stress and, in non-public schools, religion and God. In Finland, renowned for its educational system, the learning model is built around the power of play, with outcomes focused on wellbeing, happiness and joy. Education is also nearly free, from preschool through university. While held in low esteem in varied international ratings, U.S. school costs, as demonstrated in the Boston preschool case, are sky high.

Over a decade ago, in order to mitigate America’s sorrowful position in international education rankings, a consensus developed around the idea of downgrading or eliminating the arts, physical activity and play. Compounding existing problems of hurried lifestyles and rapid changes in family structure, U.S. parents supported more standardized testing — and test preparations. Alas, the general consensus is that this shift has not boosted scores or the quality of education for children. Despite tens of billions in expenditures, little to no gains in test scores have been recorded, but the spike in childhood mental health disorders has been dramatic.

So, what’s going on in Finland? How successful has their focus on play to promote happiness, physical fitness, joy and wellbeing proven to be? The answer is strikingly successful. The Finnish school system is number one in the world! Finland’s system is ranked #1 for childhood education by three different global accrediting bodies.

A recent article in the Smithsonian Magazine offers details on results, including these highlights:

Ninety-three percent of Finns graduate from academic or vocational high schools, 17.5 percentage points higher than the United States and 66 percent go on to higher education, the highest rate in the European Union. Yet Finland spends about 30 percent less per student than the United States.

Still, there is a distinct absence of chest-thumping among the famously

reticent Finns. They are eager to celebrate their recent world hockey

championship, but PISA scores, not so much. We prepare children to learn

how to learn, not how to take a test, said Pasi Sahlberg, a former math and

physics teacher who is now in Finland’s Ministry of Education and

Culture. We are not much interested in PISA. It’s not what we are about.

Let’s look more closely at the nature of play.

ILLUSTRATIVE ELEMENTS IN THE FINNISH CHILD’S WORLD OF PLAY

• Teachers embrace the principle of letting children be children; they understand that the work of children is play; parents support plentiful outdoor play.
• Parents give children space (opportunities) to learn how to assess and take risks, to value personal responsibly at the earliest possible age.
• Schools schedule 15-minute outdoor recess periods for each hour of every day, rain or shine. Self-directed intellectual and physical activity by children with minimal direct interference by adults is considered particularly effective for children in poverty, who are otherwise deprived of play at home and school.
• Educators want schools to be a child’s favorite place. Teachers are carefully selected, highly trained and well respected as elite professionals.

Test taking and assessments function on a different model from ours; in lieu of annual, high-stakes standardized tests, Finnish children are assessed daily. Student wellbeing, happiness and general exuberance are preferred indicators of social growth and emotional development.

The 67,000 member American Academy of Pediatrics is one of many U.S. champions of the Swedish educational system. In 2018, the Academy issued a clinical report urging adoption of the Finish system. It was entitled, The Power of Play.

Play enables a child to become more resilient, develop new competencies and gain confidence. When not being directed by adults, children at play learn to work in groups, share, negotiate and resolve conflicts. Play is essentially practice in decision-making, pacing and finding areas of personal interest and passion.

In the U.S., homework is to play what religion is to critical thinking — an impediment to quality of life and mental health. Homework guidelines call for one hour for middle school, two hours for high school. That amounts to 180 hours over a typical middle school year — time when children could be playing and thereby deriving the kind of gains noted in Finland.

WHAT ABOUT ADULTS?

Physicist Richard Feynman said, Play is hard to maintain as you get older. You get less playful. You shouldn’t, of course.

Indeed, you should not. Adults need play as much if not more than children, given that they are under more demands to work, serve, please and conform. Play is not expected to be a priority – who has not been told to stop playing around — get serious?

Play is therapeutic at all ages – as for children, it facilitates learning, enhances productivity and increases job satisfaction. The family that plays together is probably more likely to stay together – and enjoy doing so. Those who are play-impaired are likely to be cranky, rigid and feel stuck in a rut and/or victimized by life. Play should be part of everyday life, not something to do on weekends and holidays.

Play can be entertaining, spontaneous, energetic. Those who play are considered most likely to have the three qualities that most appeal to the opposite sex, according to a Penn State University study. These qualities are sense of humor, fun-loving and non-aggressiveness.

Adult play forms are endless; all forms count and contribute but those that entail involvement in the action are best. Going to a game and sitting might be a form of passive play, but it pales in comparison with playing a game.

The British zoologist Desmond Morris considers painting, sculpture, drawing, music, singing, dancing, gymnastics, games, sports, writing, and speech forms of adult play. With these and other expressions, he suggests we can carry on to our heart’s content, all through our long lives, complex and specialized forms of exploration and experiment.

Whether complex and specialized, or simple and commonplace, make a special effort to find all manner of ways to add play to your REAL wellness lifestyle.