This essay by Daniel Greenberg perfectly articulates the value of play in education. He works at Sudbury Valley School, where students spend their whole day playing. As more and more schools move away from the traditional style of a teacher teaching to test, and begin to experiment with constructivist and project-based learning, they must not forget the value of play in education.
Below is a fascinating excerpt from Greenberg’s essay:
"There is an absorbing two-faceted character to play: the formation of hypotheses (or rules) and the elaboration of actions within this framework, stretching the rules to their utmost extremes. Both facets are essential to the enjoyment of play, and to its significance as the quintessential model-building activity. To fashion models of reality, a person must learn not only to weave theories — i.e., to create models — but also to weave his perception of reality into his theories as well as he can, thus realizing the purpose for which the models were proposed in the first place. Being a good builder of models of reality means being good at playing!”
