children, play and learning

children, play and learning

I am curious about how children’s consumption practices relate to children’s learning. Marketers put a great deal of money, time and effort into market research with children-as-consumers, although they may argue that they do too little. In schools, administration often mandates a great deal of testing of a very different nature. A minimal amount of advertising appears in school curricula, but that is beside the point. Even though academic early childhood programs key in on play as a step toward active learning, students in most general public schools arguably have few opportunities to play while they are learning, and these playful opportunities tend to diminish as students age. In a materialist culture, companies begin to commodify learning through high-end learning-playthings. Does the high cost of these learning playthings widen the performance gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots?” Schools that have access to parent-support groups with higher socio-economic statuses (SES) will undoubtedly have an advantage over families with lower SES through better materials, superior building structures, lower student-teacher ratios, and likely, more access to play places and manipulatives (Kozol, 2005). Of course, many teachers who work in low SES schools work hard to provide play spaces and materials in learning activities, but are often limited by inferior physical environments and materials. While there is a great deal of academic research on play in early childhood, why is play missing from school programs, when it is something that kids really need? By rejecting naptime and playtime in schools, are institutions ‘rejecting’ the child’s body, and instead, only focusing on the child’s head?