There's been many a rant against schools that play competitive sports but with no goal, no end result, no winners or losers - in order to build self-esteem. I'm going to try not to join in the chant here but it's going to be hard.
An educator for 29 years — the last nine at Wolf Hill — she wanted to bring play back. Principal Renee Bonin — a classroom teacher for many years — signed on, and "peaceful play" recently was introduced at Wolf Hill School, the borough's elementary school.
"We know so much about learning," Bonin said. "There is academic and social learning. In order to rise to the top, you have to be socially and emotionally adept," and interacting on the playground helps teach those lessons.
This is all well and good, but I'm not sure what the long-term effects of creating a structured, heavily supervised, utopian environment during recess could be. Essentially, the teachers and aides are forcing children to play by the rules set for them, limiting a child's imagination. Whereas once upon a time, a child would invent their own games, in their own time, here we see adults wishing to micro-manage what a child can play, in order to make things more 'fair' and 'safe'. In what part of adult life are things fair? In what part of being a grown up are you really safe? When finally let go to find their place in the world, how are these kids going to react?
People can learn through structured activity and self-actualisation, but, you know, we also learn from our mistakes. The school of hard knocks gets a bad rap, but it has one hell of a track record. Maybe we, as adults, need to remember that sometimes before we deny entry to that school for the next generation.
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