Power of Play (Updated)
Wonder Cabinet
Wonder Cabinet Productions
4.8 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 19 July 2015
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Remember those carefree summer days you had as a kid, playing tag or pickup softball in the park? Sure, it may just seem like fun and games, but it may also have been invaluable training. A new generation of researchers is discovering that play is how the young brain prepares for adult life. This hour — as if you needed a reason — a reminder to get out and have some fun. Learning Through Play; A Perfect Playground; The Strangest Playground In the World; An Animated Life; Video Games In The Classroom.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's to the best of our knowledge from PRI. I'm Anne Strange Champs. This hour, |
| 0:08.5 | The Power of Play. |
| 0:14.0 | When I was little, my sister and I used to spend a lot of the summer outdoors, riding around on our bikes, catching fireflies, or just lying on |
| 0:23.1 | blankets under trees, reading and talking and playing card games. I bet you have memories like that |
| 0:29.3 | too. Maybe you have a time in your life when it seemed like all you had to do was play. |
| 0:35.1 | Well, new research suggests that tag and hopscotch and all the other ways we played as kids |
| 0:39.7 | actually taught us the skills that we use as adults every day, how to manage conflict, deal with |
| 0:47.2 | fear, form relationships. Play is how we train for adulthood. And that's good. But psychologist Peter Gray is worried that kids today |
| 0:57.3 | are playing less, even a lot less, than we did. Yes, there's no doubt they are definitely playing |
| 1:04.2 | less than previous generations. I should probably to make my answer clear, say something about what play is. When I say playing less, |
| 1:14.3 | I mean that there is less of what other people might call free play, but to me, free play is play. |
| 1:22.6 | They're playing less on their own. They're playing less in ways where they are controlling and directing |
| 1:30.6 | the play, where they're making their own choices, solving their own problems, where they, |
| 1:36.4 | not adults, are determining from moment to moment what they're doing. |
| 1:40.7 | So I take it little league, youth soccer leagues, karate classes. You don't |
| 1:46.0 | count these as play? These are not play by this definition. And, you know, I can elaborate on this, |
| 1:52.1 | but there's a dramatic difference in what children learn in those kinds of adult directed sports |
| 1:59.9 | and activities compared to the activities that they choose |
| 2:04.1 | and direct themselves. Like what? What's the difference in what kids learn? Well, the big difference is |
| 2:11.0 | this, that when you are playing, when you are in control of your activities, when you must make the decisions, you'll learn |
| 2:19.7 | how to do all those things. You'll learn how to make decisions. You'll learn how to control your |
| 2:24.2 | own behavior because there's no adult controlling it. You'll learn how to get along with your |
... |
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