Dewey- Play and Imagination
Appendix 3: PLAY AND IMAGINATION IN RELATION TO EARLY EDUCATION
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It is hardly necessary to say that play does not mean amusement, nor yet
games alone; it is a form of the child's activity. Dr. John Fiske has pointed out the
significance of prolonged infancy for education and social evolution. Prolonged
infancy means the postponement of the period in which the person permits his
activity with reference to the necessities of life--of getting a living--and
consequently a continued period of exercise of powers having no conscious end
or aim beyond the satisfaction and the value inhering in the exercise and
development of the powers for their own sake. This natural, unforced expression
is play, and consequently all the child's activity so far as not controlled by
necessity of reaching external ends is play. Hence three points follow:
1. Plays may be taught, but not play--that is, it is of the essence of play to
be a growth, or an expression of the child's own attitude, disposition, images, etc.
Others may take advantage of these spontaneous expressions and give them
direction; may direct them through models, suggestions, and other stimuli, but
the child must make them really his own, and then act upon them as his own, or
else he is simply going through certain external motions, into which possibly the
adult may read an ideal or spiritual significance, but which are either sensational
or mechanical to the child.
2. We must avoid the separation of play and work which the adult makes
when thinking of children. To the child, his play is his activity, his life, his
business. It is intensely serious. He is absorbed, engrossed in it. It is an
occupation. Hence many things which to the adult are work, or even [Page
mw.1.340] drudgery, may be play to the child; like sweeping, dusting, washing
dishes, etc.; it all depends upon the spirit in which the child enters into them. If he
does them for the joy of doing them, it is play; if merely for some external result
or necessity, then it is work in the adult sense. But naturally play is work to the
child, and work (which really interests him) play.
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3. We must avoid letting things down to the lower level, because we think
the child must play. Just because the child is so serious and intent in his play, we
may introduce positive material of value, which shall lead the child on. Hence he
should pass naturally, and by continuous gradations, from play in the ordinary
sense to the more definite study; to setting up and reaching ends appropriate to
older children. In an ordinary school we could not tell where the kindergarten left
off and the primary room began.
Imagination is simply the inner, the mental side of play. Aside from the
games, which are largely the overflow and exercise of physical energy, the value
of every play is measured by the imagery which finds expression in it. It is a
mistake to suppose that the imagination is concerned only with make-believe and
unreality. The child's very make- believe is taking one fragment of reality to stand
for some larger reality, as when the little girl plays with her doll, or her dishes,
and the boy with his steamboat or railway train. Through this extension of present
reality to stand for the unseen the child enlarges his capacity, his insight, and his
range of interests and sympathies. The healthy "symbolism" of the child is simply
that which takes one real element to signify and gradually build up the wider,
deeper whole, not a complete thing to stand for some unreal idea.
Hence the imagination must be really constructive; must find outlet in
some actual building up of what to the child is reality. The image must result in
doing, and in a doing which carries the child beyond his imperfect image and
helps correct it, and so on. Hence the error of stimulating and exciting the
imagination and not exercising it constructively. To arouse imagination and leave
the matter there is to appeal simply to the sensational and emotional side, and
thus to weaken character and dissipate mental energy, hence the danger in too
many stories. [Page mw.1.341]
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The child again finds culture of imagery in all his constructive activities so
far as these have the play form. The child puts a filling of social and human
values, of imagery of himself doing social service and being enlarged thereby,
into many things which to the adult are prosaic and utilitarian. For the most part it
is the everyday, homely activities and surroundings of the household and out-ofdoor life which give the most healthy media of culturing imagination. All
occupation, all school study (history, geography, etc.), is as much a means of
developing the creative imagination as are symbolic games, use of gifts, telling of
highly idealized stories and literature.
Discussion
Dr. Dewey suggested that there was a series of educational instruments
differing from Froebel. These might be the occupations of primeval man and his
home; that these should be reproduced and considered not only as useful, but
also educative.
In continuing the discussion, Dr. [William Torrey] Harris referred as follows
to the questions raised by previous speakers:
The kindergartner must get the idea of what symbolism means. Instead of
play being the object and result, play is a means. It is not a terminus, but we start
with it to get away from it. The child thinks differently from the human being. The
child gets hold of a fragment only. Reality is a series of things in a chain of
causality. The child makes rapid progress with symbolism up to his sixth year;
but he does not understand dynamics. He finds the kindergarten a great thing
after all, with its semispontaneous play. In 1872-73 Froebel found the value of
play, and selected the wisest of those already existing. No one had written before
his time of the educational value of DOING. Froebel is a classic on that subject. It
is important to get into Froebel's spirit. Without the latter he could not have
carried out all the theory we find in his "Pedagogics of the Kindergarten." The
kindergarten does not attempt to teach play, but includes causal activities. The
child takes a mere fragment and makes believe. The [Page mw.1.342]
kindergarten tries to bring the causal idea in a game of ball; the ball is merely the
blank form of the struggle to beat the other side. It symbolizes something for
which real struggle is waged. The kindergarten is not to teach symbols, merely
taking the fragment for the whole, but rather teaches how we may take the thing
for the process.
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Mrs. McLeash said: Dr. Dewey seems to have been providing for city
rather than country children. Children naturally turn to the world of nature, animal
and vegetable. The development of the constructive imagination is good. We
must face the problem of keeping the balance between the artistic and
constructive. First should come sympathy with nature and the animal world, then
later opportunity for constructive work. This gives later a freedom from the
drudgery of farm life. Such sympathy with nature goes far to ward the
development of religious life. Feeling about God and the soul comes largely from
intercourse with the world of nature. I have had experiment with two boys, to
show the relation between the vegetable and animal world. Next day one boy
exclaimed quite spontaneously, "How wonderful God is!" He had carried the
experiment back to its cause in God. Too much story- telling has sad mental
results. There are many cases where good minds have been frittered away.
Dr. Dewey closed this interesting discussion as follows: As to the
question, How far the child should be taken from familiar things, I would say that
the work in his kindergarten is entirely planned by the kindergartner. When taking
up the miner, the children carried each stage backward from those they knew to
those which were unfamiliar to their experience. Balls and blocks are certainly
historical toys. I would not rule them out. I plead not for restriction, but
enlargement of material, and this depends on the insight, intelligence, and
experience of the teachers. I agree with Dr. Harris as to the fragmentary
character of symbols. We need to give a broad platform for principles.
Froebel was the greatest experimenter and investigator, unless we except
Pestalozzi. We want to go on into the realities of child nature. He disclaims being
the inventor of new games and occupations for the child. Try to find out what
children did and what appealed to them. [Page mw.1.343]
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In reply to the criticism that domestic and household work makes children
prosaic and destroys spontaneity, Dr. Dewey said that he did not find dishwashing unimaginative and prosaic, for he had done it.
I think children get a cultivation of imagination in dish- washing. It is the
child who is the poet and artist, and puts this into his work if we give him freedom
of action. The child's thoughts are indefinite, vague, and emotional. He should be
kept in sympathetic identification with the mother of the household. Imagination
must work its way out into poetic elements. In the doll, what ethical and social
elements are there, the child finds and puts these into it.
In answer to Mrs. McLeash, I have seen some of the kindergarten children
playing that the bur was a cocoon and they the caterpillars or moths. This shows
the city children had had some relations with nature.