‘Work hard, play hard’ and ‘work hard or go home’ are bumper sticker slogans that may help achieve success on the field but not in the classroom. Recent research and books on learning suggest editing the first slogan to ‘work hard, play harder’ if we want to create academic environments that help students succeed. In America’s education system, however, we have focused exclusively on work to such an extent that play is being excluded from school. Most American school districts have either reduced or eliminated recess, phys-ed and other playtime to allocate more time for work focused on studying and taking standardized tests.
The importance of play in successful learning has been highlighted and demonstrated by ancient scholars (i.e., Plato), modern neuroscientists (i.e., William Klemm) and the top test scoring countries in the world (i.e., Finland). American education leaders have ignored the evidence for the play-learning nexus by placing their heads in the proverbial sand when they should be building more sandboxes for students at all academic levels. Learning sandboxes range from wooden sandboxes at recess time for elementary schoolchildren to Makerspaces for middle and high school students to virtual online sandboxes for college students. “Play,” according to Diane Ackerman (the public science writer of The Human Age and 23 other books), “is our brain’s favorite way of learning.”
Our brain’s favorite way of learning is being removed from American schools. “When I was in elementary school,” states Peter Gray (author of Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Live), “in the 1950s, we had six-hour school days: two hours of outdoors playing per day, half hour in the morning, half hour during lunch, and a full hour in the afternoon.” Today, the national average is twenty-six minutes of recess and Connecticut, my home state, only “recommends” 20 minutes (in addition, my three boys—ages 7, 9 & 11—are given less than 20 minutes for lunch each school day). There are less than a handful of states that even require daily recess. In contrast, Finland—always at the top or near the top of international test scores—provides a 15-minute break every 45 minutes for students during the school day.
The demise of play in American schools has been linked by Peter Gray and others to a decline in cognitive and social skills as well as an increase in mental disorders. William Klemm, professor of neuroscience at Texas A&M University, recently summarized several studies on the importance of play writing that “When members of a play-oriented species [such as humans] are denied access to juvenile play, they can become dysfunctional adults…Juvenile play sculpts the brain to be more adaptable later in life. In modern human society, juvenile play is often obstructed by such externals as over-scheduling, too much adult supervision, and too many restrictions…In this respect, the ‘good old days’ really were the good old days.” Elementary school students need their play for cognitive and social-emotional learning and we, as a society, need to provide them with the playtime necessary for their development into functional adults. Increasing time for recess is not only healthy for our children but our communities.
“Do not,” Plato said, “keep children to their studies by compulsion but by play.” Yes, even Plato knew about the importance of play in education. One of the most creative ways to “keep children to their studies by play” is to build time into middle and high school curricula for using a Makerspace (a.k.a. Hackerspace). A Makerspace is an area where students learn through experimental play with technology and ideas under the guidance of teachers and other experts in the community. It is a space where students play with concepts learned in the classroom for the purpose of bringing their ideas to life via a 3D printer, software code, plasma cutter and other tools. In the words of the Makerspace Playbook: “Making is innovative and resourceful. Makers build off the idea of others and choose the best tools for the job…They identify their own challenges and solve new problems. Making provides ample opportunities to deeply understand difficult concepts. Makers seek out STEM content to improve their projects, and they cross disciplines to achieve their goals, rather than staying within one specialty.” A Makerspace is where Einstein’s idea of combinatory play is figuratively and literally brought to life.
If a community or school district does not have the resources to immediately setup a Makerspace, a relatively inexpensive way of incorporating play into the curriculum is by gamifying parts of classes. Game-based learning occurs through low-tech ways such as the collaborative geography game called Galactic Mappers (seen in the video via Edutopia noted below) to high-tech options such as Statecraft.sim, which I used in my International Relations course this past semester. Assessing student learning is not only more enjoyable for the students as compared to standardized tests but my experience shows that their learning is deeper and more enduring.
The U.S. education system is using sand exclusively for building sand timers (for tests) rather than using it to build imaginations and engage students in learning. The system is focused on turning over sand timers rather than turning on students to learning. Since I’m at the tail end of the argument, let’s go back to one of the bumper sticker slogans I started with to sum it all up: ‘go hard or go home.’ School leaders will have to ‘go’ a little harder to work play into their curricula or send their students ‘home’ knowing that they are less cognitively, emotionally and socially prepared for the real world than they could and should be.
Cordell, Sigrid Anderson, “Nixing Recess: The Silly, Alarmingly Popular Way to Punish Kids,” The Atlantic (October, 2013).
Edutopia, “Building Formative Assessment into Game-Based Learning,” YouTube (May 13, 2014).
Klemm, William, “The Neuroscience of Why Children Play,” Psychology Today blog, Memory Medic (December 12, 2014).
Klemm, W.R., Mental Biology: The New Science of How the Brain and Mind Relate (New York: Prometheus Books, 2014).
Korbey, Holly, “Despite Benefits, Recess fro Many Students is Restricted,” MindShift, KQED blog (July 26, 2013).
Makerspace Playbook: School Edition (Spring 2013).
Solomon, Andrew, “Go Play Outside,” New York Times Book Review of A Country Called Childhood by Jay Griffiths (December 14, 2014): p 26-27.
Chris is Professor of Political Science at Western Connecticut State University, a Fulbright Scholar, Director of the Kathwari Honors Program, and founding Director of the Center for Compassion, Creativity & Innovation. He is also the author of "The Compassionate Achiever: How Helping Others Fuels Success" (HarperOne, 2017).
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