Play is a skill

When I talk to PE teachers in under-resourced communities, one of the most common complaints I hear is, "The kids won't even play." It's usually muttered at the point of exasperation, after the teacher has tried super-structured direct instruction, after he has tried competitive round-robin tournaments, after he has tried taking a vote and letting the class choose the next unit. The kids won't even play! In other words, the students balked at every traditional version of organized activity the teacher could think of, so he finally gave in and just rolled out a bunch of balls and equipment in the hopes that his students could at least be active (which is, apparently, the baseline measure of success these days, regardless of whether the level of activity required of a person during, say, a lazy game of badminton actually improves health outcomes). And yet even with this final, desperate plea from his students -- just pick something, anything, and at least look like you're getting some exercise -- he has failed. He cannot even get them to play on their own.

Because here's the thing: they don't know how.

I can hear the protests now. "How hard is it to just pick a game and play it?" Or, "Kids in the suburbs are active no matter what game teachers pick - surely we can expect that all kids could be active if given a choice?!" And so on.

Most people reading this are experts at play, whether you realize it or not. You were likely exposed to a variety of games and sports growing up, so most American sports are at least familiar to you. You were good at some games and not as good at others, but you realized over time that nothing bad happened after the games you lost; you subsequently shed much of your self-consciousness about performing poorly in front of peers. You probably grew up with older siblings, neighbors, parents, or coaches who taught you how to improvise and think creatively during play. You learned a bunch of little strategies to try when you were bored: How far/fast can I throw this thing? How can I adapt the rules from a game I already know and apply them to a game we are still learning? How can I start with something easy and make it more difficult as I get better?

There is a negative connotation of "free play" among PE teachers, and especially academic teachers and administrators judging PE from afar. "Oh, that teacher does free play all day," is almost never a compliment.

But here's the other thing: free play is the pinnacle of learning.

In the exploration and creativity required during unstructured time, the settled disputes that don't require teacher intervention, the inclusion of others to make teams even, the modifications of rules based on space and equipment limitations ... that's where the magic of education is really found. If you have kids who can do "free play" for an hour of PE, you have an advanced class.

In correctly recognizing that some students lacked exposure to diverse movement opportunities growing up, we have developed uber-specific standards to get those kids caught up. Consider this second grade standard: "1.1 Move to open spaces within boundaries while traveling at increasing rates of speed." If you can wade through the overly-complicated jargon, you'll realize that anyone who has played a game of tag has done this. The standard is asking teachers to assess second graders on a skill they will develop naturally through play. Worse, some well-meaning teachers will actually grade eight-year-olds on this skill, thinking they're doing the student a favor by letting them know their shortcomings ("so they can work on them" - or whatever). Getting tagged is all the negative reinforcement an eight-year-old needs, I promise.

We don't need to be teaching kids specific sport skills, at least not in the primary grades. We need to be teaching them to play, especially the children who grew up in neighborhoods that limit the opportunities for free expression. We need to give these students lots of unstructured time -- time that will appear chaotic to onlookers but will allow students to get bored and innovate. We can coax and coach them along the way, of course -- try kicking that ball this way or that way, see if that boy over there would like to try to catch this frisbee you're throwing -- and we have to swallow our pride and accept that we will never win teaching awards for having the most orderly classes.

Learning is messy. It's chaotic. It's full of starts and stops and redirections. Real self-directed learning means a kid may focus on four-square for an entire year, experimenting with the nuances of strategy over and over again, before moving on to the next activity. Taking that opportunity for experimentation away because it's time for us to move on to the next unit -- based on whose criteria, by the way? -- is robbing him of the ability to find out who he is as an athlete and person.

I am not advocating that we let kids do whatever they want. As teachers, we do need to guide and prod to expose students to new ideas and movements. And I'm not arguing that recess will suffice as a replacement for PE. Again, we need trained PE teachers to head kids off at the pass when they're doing something dangerous or truly mechanically incorrect.

But when we take away too many opportunities for free play at a young age, the result is teenagers who are timid and lack physical creativity. That's no recipe for long term health.