"America's children have in Vivian Gussin Paley an extraordinarily knowing and thoughtful observer—indeed, a resourceful teacher who has so much to tell us about how our country's young people live, learn, grow, in mind, heart and spirit. Here is a book brimming with brave wisdom that will help us parents and teachers understand how our sons and daughters, our students come to terms with life through their minds' activity."—Robert Coles
"At a time when policymakers are attempting to convert the preschool years into basic training for school, master teacher Vivian Paley reminds us that fantasy play is the essential, irreplaceable curriculum of the first years of life. Instead of 'No Child Left Behind' we stand in risk of establishing a culture where the heart of childhood is left out."—Howard Gardner
An excerpt from|
A Child's Work
The Importance of Fantasy Play
Vivian Gussin Paley
When did first grade lose its status in the United States as the beginning of formal learning? That was a time when kindergarten children were called the "little ones" by the other teachers who came by to watch them play. Even the older children recognized the difference between pretend and real schoolchildren. "Kindergarten babies, first-grade ladies" was the refrain heard on the playground, and there was some truth in the ancient tease.
Kindergartners were expected to be somewhat "babyish," and "immature" was a stage of growth and not an accusation when I began to teach. Yet, compared to nursery school children, the kindergarten girls and boys had entered the graduate program in fantasy play. The themes were lengthened and deepened and their conversations were more complex and analytical.
First-grade teachers approached their tasks slowly, knowing that their newest students still had one foot in fantasy play. "This is a big A," the teachers announced on the first day. "We'll do big A's for a while and then be ready for little a's." This was how the alphabet was introduced in first grade when I was a child and even when I began teaching in New Orleans in the fifties. The goal was seldom to teach the letter A; all the children knew their A's plus a few other letters as well. Some had begun to read on their own. But he display of the alphabet was the opening salvo of real school, where reading and writing would begin in earnest.
First-grade teachers were among the strongest advocates for the sanctity of kindergarten, warning us to stay in our own territory and not invade theirs. "Don't get into lowercase," they told us. There would be dire consequences, such as bad handwriting, nervousness, stuttering, and, in general, the self-defeating attitudes that often accompany the too-early introduction of formal lessons.
Behind kindergarteners' attempts to write or read there were attributes, we were told, that we couldn't see and might misjudge, eye-hand coordination and aural discrimination being a few examples. And there were characteristics of kindergartners that were plain enough for everyone to see: restlessness, impulsivity, timidity, and a general state of dreaminess. The children themselves continually reminded us that play was still their most usable context. It was not the monsters they invented that frightened them in kindergarten; it was being told to sit still and pay attention for long periods of time.
Short attention spans were not yet considered a deficit in my schools in Great Neck, N.Y., and Chicago in the sixties and seventies. We saw that the children's concentration was intense when they played and we filled the other times with playful rhyming games, songs, and poetry, to which we added picture books and fairy tales. The children's own chants and shouts rang out as they ran, climbed, jumped, pushed, pulled, and rearranged their environment, all in the name of fantasy play. Restlessness, impulsivity, and timidness faded in the quest for a dramatic role, and daydreams awakened into social play and big arcs of paint.
There were faculty discussions in the sixties about the "new" superhero play. Did the growing access to television cha