The value of play-based education

[Queen Villager]

Excellent opinion piece on the subject.

Want to get your kids into college? Let them play - CNN.com

[ssleepygirl]

great article- thanks for posting!

[jazzcat]

I got nothing ...but the above screen name is way cool.

[joerenij]

Play based education is good for the kids. With that we can attract the kids towards education. Kids are more likely to take play based education because they take the education with playing.

[Eastcoast]

Worthless article.

Cudos to the authors for getting a pointless pos published.

[boo]

This is also a good article about the importance of play in general:

Children and Youth - Play - Development - Science - New York Times

[Queen Villager]

What's the point of your comment, Eastcoast? You denigrate an article posted months ago but don't list even one reasoned objection. The Internet is full of angry, unconstructive name-calling lacking in substance. If you're not stating the nature of your disagreement, why bother?

[Eastcoast]

What's the point of your comment, Eastcoast? You denigrate an article posted months ago but don't list even one reasoned objection. The Internet is full of angry, unconstructive name-calling lacking in substance. If you're not stating the nature of your disagreement, why bother?

To be clear I wasn't attacking you.

I find the kind of pablum such as these articles to be offensive, really who doesn't know the importance of play. To often I wind up reading rubbish that is merely a self-aggrandizing bit of pr/marketing fluff and it pisses me off. Anecdotal info without studies to back up the claims, "just floating a few ideas out there for some coverage before we hit up a publisher to show that our ground breaking ideas have some real traction" kinda bs that obviously drives me bananas.

Go ahead and try to find a school for you child that doesn't tout the fact that they follow a play based curriculum. While out at Episcopal Academy I asked the admissions czar point blank if they could direct me towards a program based on structured academics, not play. In response all I got was: Blink. Intake of breath. "Well I have heard that Dalton can be tough in that way".

[Queen Villager]

Eastcoast - Thanks for your response. I saw the article -- or the points expressed in it -- as a response to the teach-to-the-test, homework-in-kindergarten nonsense of the past several years. While I can't back this up with stats, my impression is that many parents are more impressed with programs that require homework for very young children than with the value of play, and plenty of schools and even daycares and preschools are playing to the expectation of big-kid academic exercises for children who are essentially babies.