nge the children's behavior? Now that Superman and Batman could be seen in action, was play becoming too aggressive? It was clear that the boys felt compelled to copy the look and sounds of every new superhero that appeared on television and in the toy stores, but the play itself was little different from the cowboy and army play of earlier generations and could be tolerated. Soon Barbie would arrive and the kindergarten girls did not take long to remake her into a mother, sister, or princess. In other words, little seemed changed in terms of kindergarten play and the opportunities it provided for expansive social interaction, innovative thinking, and endless subjects for conversation.
What we may have overlooked was the fact that young children were spending far more time watching television than ever they had listening to the radio. None of us imagined that children at home would voluntarily limit their own playing in order to watch television. We still took play for granted and talked about nearly everything else except its literary or philosophical potential. It was as if, in a discussion of library books, we spoke about the paper, the print, the bindings, and the cover, and ignored the stories that compelled the authors to write the books. Nonetheless, we found enough to admire in play to keep it center stage in classroom life.
Then, midway through the eighties and nineties, a new sentiment began to be heard. With the growth of nursery schools and childcare centers came the notion that there was too much play. Since children were entering school at a younger age, wouldn't they have had enough play before kindergarten? The need for play, in other words, was considered to be a factor of the number of early years spent in school. Furthermore, these early years were designated as the optimum time to introduce the shapes and sounds of letters rather than the shapes and sounds of characters in a story.
The principles of child development were being rewritten, unaccompanied by a huge outcry of disbelief. One began to hear the word "boredom" attached to play, probably for the first time in human history. It was an odd concept to tag on to the single activity children loved best, but there was a growing nervousness about what was going on (or not going on) in kindergarten. The "academic kindergarten" was offered as the antidote to boredom and, further confusing our logic and commonsense, children labeled "at risk," who often had less opportunity for play and talk at home, were allowed less time for these activities in school as well.
At educational conferences in the nineties, kindergarten teachers continued to defend play, even as they had to allow more and more paperwork to clutter the tables and walls. Some teachers tried to recapture the certainties of the past by collecting antique block sets and doll-corner cribs, ancient dolls, and little wooden cars and trains, resisting anything that came in a catalogue. But we overlooked the real villain in our midst. It turned out to be not so much the "academics" we were adding but the time we subtracted from the children's fantasy play that would begin to make the difference.
Having not listened carefully enough to their play, we did not realize how much time was needed by children in order to create the scenery and develop the skills for their ever-changing dramas. We removed the element—time—that enabled play to be effective, then blamed the children when their play skills did not meet our expectations.
Although we feared the influence of television, we were cutting down on the one activity that counteracts the mindlessness of cartoons. We blamed television for making children restless and distracted, then substituted an academic solution that compounded restlessness and fatigue. The children may have been the only ones capable of making sense of the confusion, and they did so when-ever the schedule was cleared so they could play.
The misplaced academics of kindergarten affected the first grade as well. When kindergarten was the place for pretending school, first-grade teacher