This commentary is by Janet McLaughlin, executive director of the Vermont Association for the Education of Young Children.
Play is an astonishing, beautiful phenomenon, especially in our highly structured society. When children are given space to play, it is natural, open-ended, and unconstrained by time.
Despite some toy marketers’ best efforts, play can’t be scaled or commodified. It’s about creativity, not control.
Still, play can occur only under certain conditions. Mostly, children need free time and room to play. They need just a few materials that can serve whatever purpose their imagination requires: for example, a piece of fabric can become a cloak, a tablecloth, a boat, a blanket, a backpack, a tent.
The outdoors is ideal for play because so many natural materials — sticks, leaves, shade trees, soil, water, seeds and berries, even bugs — are ripe for exploration and transformation.
Early childhood educators are trained to create these conditions every day. Like play alchemists, they provide safe surroundings, a few key materials, and encourage children to lead their own play exploration — and develop thousands of social and life skills in the process.
But early childhood educators also know that access to play is inequitable. Privileged children encounter opportunities for play, particularly play in natural environments, far more readily than lower-income and BIPOC children do, writes Ijumaa Jordan, who visits early childhood education programs across the country for her research.
Efforts to close the achievement gap can backfire, she writes, when these “educational reforms, applied to children from low-income communities, children of color, and Native American children, are restricting their access to self-initiated, complex play, which hampers their learning and healthy development. It’s time we analyze how systemic classism and racism protect play for some children while devaluing it for others.”
I am thinking about play, play equity, and inclusion in relation to June’s celebrations of Juneteenth and Pride Month. Juneteenth marks the conclusion of centuries of horrific chattel slavery. It’s a celebration of Black American culture and history, and had been celebrated in Black communities for decades before it became a federal holiday last year. It is the first federal holiday in which Black American life is centered.
The core of Pride is celebration and love of LGBTQIA individuals within a community, who historically have been asked or forced to disguise their true selves. And while community members who identify as cis and straight may show up as allies, the center belongs to folks who identify as LGBTQIA.
We know society works better, is more fun, and is far healthier when it is inclusive. When we all have healthy and fluid opportunities to be in and out of the center. When we all can safely explore who we are, and try on who we want to be.
Play is how children learn this. When communities actively and joyfully celebrate Pride and Juneteenth, we reinforce the idea that everyone has the right to be their true selves, and everyone deserves to have the light shine on them. It mobilizes all of us to notice and address the many disparities that continue to exist when the celebration is over, to keep growing.
At the Vermont Association for the Education of Young Children, we are committed to equity and excellence in early childhood education. That means we are working to give every child in Vermont opportunities to play, explore and grow. And it means that, as a state, we must support our early childhood educators with public policy and investments that offer them the opportunity to create truly inclusive learning communities that bring the magic of play to all children.
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