Play as Core Arts Experience for Young Children
by Paddy Bowman

Gail Matthews-DeNatale, a folklorist working in folklife, technology, and K-12 education posits the following questions about "play" for those of us interested in youth and education:

What does it mean to be a child?
What is the nature of childhood?
What is the value of childhood?
What is the best way to think of and treat children (and their "play")?
What is the relationship between language and play? Arts disciplines and play?
What are the implications of play for learning communities?
How do we know when someone is playing?
What impact does the play "frame" have on participants' capacity to process information and make connections?
How do we learn to learn?

American children spend many hours under the supervision and organization of adults or plugged into mass media and pop culture. Underpinning both the academic pedagogy offered in formal settings -such as schools, religious institutions, museums, dance classes, or art schools - and under the powerful pedagogical influence of media and pop culture that emblazons even disposable diaper tabs, today's young children still find their first artistic experiences and expression in the realm of traditional folk culture. Lullabies, pat-a-cake, silly songs, bathtub play, bedtime rituals, sand castles, family meals--these are the drama, poetry, dance, sculpture, songs, and ceremonies of earliest childhood that welcome them into the human family. Like other young animals, as children grow, they naturally and instinctively play. Why? Because, according to anthropologist Gregory Bateson, play provides a framework for "deutero learning," or "learning to learn." Folklorist Gail Matthews-DeNatale writes, "Play is not only a form of learning relationship; it is also a form of communication, a way to consider the relationship between things, people, ideas, and emotions--an opportunity to make connections between concepts. Children at play in make-believe dramas explore categories of relationships, societal roles, and cultural processes. Play's abstract dimension allows us to focus on the relationships and connections between things, rather than on the things themselves."

According to Bateson, play is often misunderstood. People look at the abstractions and imaginary worlds associated with play and mistakenly view them in a literal framework. Here's a description by Bateson quoted from H. Schwartzman, p. 219):

Someone has said that we know that play is important to children because it is in play that we learn role behavior. What I would like to say is that there is an element of truth in that, no doubt, but there seems to be a much more important truth in that it is by play that an individual learns there are sorts and categories of behavior. . . .The child is playing at being an archbishop. I am not interested in the fact that he learns about how to be an archbishop from playing the role; but that he learns that there is such a thing as an archbishop from playing the role. He learns or acquires a new view, partly flexible and partly rigid, which is introduced into life when he realizes that behavior can, in a sense, be set to a logical type or style. It is not the learning of the particular style that you are playing at, but the fact of stylistic flexibility and the fact that choice of style is related to the frame and context of behavior, classified by context in some way.

Folklore, which of course includes the lore of children and families, plays a vital but often invisible role in forming our worldview, holding our lives together, teaching us to be part of many groups within our culture. Mary and Herbert Knapp (p. 3) write, "Whether it be useful or silly, true or false, folklore connects us to the past and to each other, because it requires face-to-face contact. It exists when people share an identity, when they recognize themselves as members of a group united by race, nationality, occupation, class, geography, or age; and since all of us once belonged to that group of human beings we call children, the folklore of childhood brings together all of us." Matthews-DeNatale writes that it is hard to overestimate the importance of play in relation to the arts, for play allows all of us to find pleasure in the "not real." There is joy in the process, it is spontaneous and heightens the senses. In the unself-conscious absorption of play, children find a singular focus, a "flow." Play provides a frame for learning, establishes belonging and community, explores the theater of the imaginary and alternate identities and social roles, offers alternative perspectives, inspires virtuosity, teaches problem solving and discovery, tutors us in aesthetics, reveals complex categories and strategies that lead to lifelong learning."‘Child's play' may be the opposite of ‘brain surgery' in our colloquial lexicon, but play is anything but a simple-minded venture. Play is many things at once: a concept, process, form of relationship, state of being, and learning space."

 The Lore and Language of School Children, Iona and Peter Opie, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959.

One Potato, Two Potato: The Secret Education of American Children, Mary and Herbert Knapp, NY: W.W. Norton, 1976.

Songs in Their Heads: Music and Its Meaning in Children's Lives, Patricia Shehan Campbell, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

"Teach Us How to Play: The Role of Play in Technology Education," Gail Matthews-DeNatale, in The Writing Classroom, ed. Susanmarie Harrington, Hampton Press, expected press date of 1998.

Transformations: The Anthropology of Children's Play, Helen Schwartzman, NY: Plenum Press, 1978.

[Material written for the Arts Education Partnership Task force on Early Childhood Learning Through the Arts, by Paddy Bowman.]