The first time I heard that 'play is the work of children' was in 1949 from Rena Wilson, director of the Newcomb Nursery school in New Orleans and a lecturer at Sophie Newcomb College.
Miss Wilson promised us, as undergraduate students, a view into the very heart of early childhood. While observing children in the nursery school, she told us, 'You are watching the only age group in school that is always busy making up its own work assignments. It looks and sounds like play, yet we properly call this play the work of children. Why? That is what you are here to find out.'
None of us thought the task was easy. What we couldn't capture was the intensity and intentionality that accompanied everything the children said and did - until Miss Wilson gently persuaded us to add our imaginations to the mix.
In time we discovered that play was indeed work. First there was the business of deciding who to be and who the others must be and what the environment is to look like and when it is time to change the scene. Then there was the even bigger problem of getting others to listen to you and accept your point of view while keeping the integrity of the make-believe, the commitment of the other players, and perhaps the loyalty of a best friend.
The hardest part of the play for us to reproduce or invent was the fantasies themselves. Ours were never as convincing or interesting as the children's; it took us a great deal of practice to do what was, well, child's play in the nursery.
What an astonishing invention is this activity we call fantasy play. Are we really willing to let it disappear from our preschools, where today's revision of priorities means lessons have begun to replace play as the centrepiece of community life?
'I'm not inclined to encourage fantasy play any more if my teachers can't handle it,' a preschool director admitted recently. 'If the teachers are worried about what's coming out, especially with the fours and fives, everyone is better off if we stick to lesson plans and projects.'
'Has the play changed that much?' I asked.
'The teachers think so. Maybe it's the increased tension since 9/11. Children do seem less prepared, more at risk. We're on safer ground with a somewhat academic curriculum. It's more dependable.'
I would have to disagree. There is no activity for which young children are better prepared than fantasy play. Nothing is more dependable and risk- free, and the dangers are only pretend (see box). What we are in danger of doing is de-legitimising mankind's oldest and best-used learning tool.
I would not do without the books we read and reread until they are memorised; the arts, crafts and games we make and remake as we enlarge our perspectives and skills; and the music and poetry that give rhythm and rhyme to our feelings.
However, fantasy play is the glue that binds together all other pursuits, including the early teaching of reading and writing skills.
It is in the development of their themes and characters and plots that children explain their thinking and enable us to wonder who we might become as their teachers. If fantasy play provides the nourishing habitat for the growth of cognitive, narrative, and social connectivity in young children, then it is surely the staging area for our common enterprise: an early school experience that best represents the natural development of young children.
