One of the very first home schooling conferences I attended had Peter Grey as a guest speaker. It was not the first I'd heard of these concepts, but it was the first I understood them fully.
I had major shifts in my thinking and trajectory with schooling my boys. I went from shoving facts and "teaching my baby to read" to going out an playing and letting them play freely - and NOT feel guilty about letting my boys really play, even if it meant that was how we spent the whole day. So even now with my boys - play was the most important thing we did today!
"The decline in opportunity to play has also been accompanied by a
decline in empathy and a rise in narcissism, both of which have been
assessed since the late 1970s with standard questionnaires given to
normative samples of college students. Empathy refers to the ability and
tendency to see from another person’s point of view and experience what
that person experiences. Narcissism refers to inflated self-regard,
coupled with a lack of concern for others and an inability to connect
emotionally with others. A decline of empathy and a rise in narcissism
are exactly what we would expect to see in children who have little
opportunity to play socially. Children can’t learn these social skills
and values in school, because school is an authoritarian, not a
democratic setting. School fosters competition, not co-operation; and
children there are not free to quit when others fail to respect their
needs and wishes."
" Because students spend nearly
all their time studying, they have little opportunity to be creative,
take initiative, or develop physical and social skills: in short, they
have little opportunity to play."
"You can’t teach creativity; all you can do is let it blossom, and it blossoms in play"
Here are a few quotes. The whole article is here
http://www.aeonmagazine.com/being-human/children-today-are-suffering-a-severe-deficit-of-play/
Our Holistic Home Schooling Journey Based on Truth Responsibility Integrity Basics Arts Language
