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Sunday, Nov 22, 2009
What did the children find so compelling about the game that they were unable to stop playing it?
I think that children generally are bombarded with violence in the media -- not only in television and movies that they actually see but also in advertisements for violent movies during television shows and movies that are appropriate. They are also exposed to violence in the advertising that they see on the streets, and by listening to other kids, maybe older kids, talk about movies they've seen or heard about. So it's all around them.
Many people, when confronted with children's violent play, especially post-Columbine, believe that it is a dress rehearsal for the real thing. At one point in your book, you quote Bettelheim as saying that playing with guns won't make a child a killer any more than playing with blocks will make him an architect. Do you feel that there is too much emphasis on the symbols of violence?
I think it's very important for us to limit the violence our children are exposed to, especially for the younger ones. But since they will be exposed to some violence, it's important to understand that their playing it is the equivalent of adults conversing about it.
For instance, the day after the Columbine shooting, all the teachers were talking about what it must have felt like to be there -- to be a parent or a teacher or a student. If our principal had come in saying, "Anyone who is talking about Columbine is in danger of becoming a Columbine shooter," it would have been detrimental to our well-being. We needed to talk about those things to process them.
Children process things through their play: One child stands up and another child points a finger and says "Bang, bang," and the first child falls down and then laughs and gets up. That is the child asking: What would it feel like to have been there? What did those children feel like? What would those mothers (whom they saw on the television screen) feel like? We do that through conversation; they do that through play. Could this really happen here? Play is their way to ask that question.
So if we focus on the violence of the content [of their play], we might lose the opportunity to focus on what they are worried about. That's not to say that we should ignore the violent content -- we need to focus on it in a productive way, rather than make them feel bad for even thinking about it.
Many public schools have censored children for engaging in the type of play you allow in your classroom -- anything from a 5-year-old who plays finger gun games to a 14-year-old who writes a Halloween essay with violent content can lead to suspension or even expulsion. How much of your freedom came from the fact that you were teaching in a private school?
There are fewer and fewer schools in which teachers are free to experiment in the way that I did, and I feel very fortunate that I was able to do that. I could learn more about the issues involved, and try to come up with new solutions to them. In schools today, there isn't time, because of the pressure to cover a certain curriculum, and the rules are very strict and limiting about how you can deal with various problems as they come up.
Is this kind of play new? After all, your book opens with a picture of you as a child in a cowgirl outfit, with your hand on a toy gun in a holster. Does this generation of children play differently -- are they more influenced by violence than previous generations?
Children's play often has violent content. Certainly it did when I was a kid and we played cowboys and Indians, or Peter Pan and the pirates. But although it's normal for kids to be dealing with violent imagery in their play, it's a lot more explicit today.
