You can't say you can't play

Yesterday I finished reading the book You Can't Say You Can't Play by Vivian Gussin Paly. Now, if you are a long time reader her, that name should be a little familiar as I've been a fan of hers for a long time. If you are newer, you might have missed some of my previous posts. I wrote about her book The Boy Who Would be a Helicopter and The Girl with the Brown Crayon quite a few years ago. 

What I love most about Ms. Gussin's work is the respect she shows children and her willingness to look carefully at her own actions, always questioning is this is the best way to teach children. This book is no different. The book starts out with a tumultuous feeling in her classroom that leaves her unsettled. As she thinks about what is happening she begins to wonder if every child feels truly welcome and accepted or are they merely visitors to the classroom community. She notices this most strongly when children (and it is more often then not the same children) are told they cannot play by other children during their free play time. Ms. Paly goes one step farther, though, and questions if as a teacher she is complicit in the creation of three groups of children, those who control the play, those who are often invited, and those who rarely are. 

Over the course of the book, Ms. Paly has multiple conversations with many groups of children over the idea of introducing a rule that "you can't say you can't play". This means that if a child wants to play with a group of children, the rule is that the child must be included. Essentially the discussions boil down to children want to be included... they all remembered a time they were not... yet, they still want the power to exclude. It is kind of human nature in a nutshell. 

Eventually, Ms. Paly decides she is just going to go ahead and adopt the rule for her classroom. There is some ongoing discussion about details, but in the end, everyone played and she noticed that the play was more imaginative and the tone of the classroom was calmer. Even the children who fought the hardest against the rule, ended up pleased about the outcome, for it did protect them as well.

We adults could do with the same lesson. I'll let Ms. Paly sum up.

"The children, of course, cannot possibly be aware of all the changes Sarah [her assistant] and I have been watching. I feel a tinge of regret that next year's class will begin the school year with 'You can't say you can't play' as a given. It must be so, for I can never go back to the old ways. Yet the real excitement has been the process of discovery.

However, the concept of open access, I suspect, can never be taken for granted, but must in fact be rediscovered each year by a new group. 'You can't say you can't play' is apparently not as natural a law as, for example, 'I say you can't play.'

That being the case, we have our work cut out for us, in every grade, if we are to prepare our children to live and work comfortably with the strangers that sojourneth among them. And should it happen that one day our children themselves are the strangers, let them know that a full share of the sun is rightfully theirs." (pp. 129-130)

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I was saddened to learn that Ms. Paly died in 2019 at the age of 90. You know that question, "If you could invite three famous people to dinner..." well, she would definitely be one of my three.