Our little men and women; modern methods of character building; . WHY TEACH A CHILDTO PLAY? BY G. E. JOHNSON, SUPERINTENDENT OF PLAYGROUND ASSOCIA-TION, PITTSBURG, PA. THERE are two somewhat paradoxical expressions oftenused by playground people. One is vacation school,the other supervised play. The paradox disappears, how-ever, when we come to think of it. Both expressions are quitenatural and logical. Vacation suggests leisure and the originalmeaning of the word school was leisure. Leisure has al-ways been an essential in education and in human very nature of childhood and the g
Our little men and women; modern methods of character building; . WHY TEACH A CHILDTO PLAY? BY G. E. JOHNSON, SUPERINTENDENT OF PLAYGROUND ASSOCIA-TION, PITTSBURG, PA. THERE are two somewhat paradoxical expressions oftenused by playground people. One is vacation school,the other supervised play. The paradox disappears, how-ever, when we come to think of it. Both expressions are quitenatural and logical. Vacation suggests leisure and the originalmeaning of the word school was leisure. Leisure has al-ways been an essential in education and in human very nature of childhood and the gradual prolongationof human infancy illustrate this. Leisure is Times most pre-cious gift to man. The expression vacation school, onemight say, means very leisurely leisure, or very educationaleducation. This is, perhaps, what Mark Twain meant whenhe said, Dont let your sons schooling interfere too muchwith his fcJD ao 2 < •p oPn fee VI a 5 s WHY TEACH A CHILD TO PLAY? 261 The expression supervised play has particularly of-fended some people sensitive to paradox. The rapid growthof the playground movement has really raised seriously in theminds of some the questions, Why should we teach childrento play? Can play be supervised? Recently in Washing-ton these very questions were seriously debated in Congressand an appropriation for playgrounds was defeated on theground that supervised play was unnatural, that you couldntteach children to play. I was told that one of the distinguishedgentlemen said, You might as well try to teach fishes to swimas children to play. The honorable gentleman was right, quite right, so far ashe understood what he was talking about. I have much sym-pathy with those who note how far in our attempt to educatethe child we have taken from him his initiative, who object tofurther encroachment upon the sacred domain of the records of that debate show an e
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