Foreword by Sir Ken Robinson
Chapter 1: The Coming Golden Age of Childhood
Chapter 2: A Tale of Two Fathers
Chapter 3: The Learning Power of Play
Chapter 4: The GERM that Kills Play
Chapter 5: An American Tragedy: The Death of Recess
Chapter 6: The Global War on Play
Chapter 7: The Great Play Experiments
Chapter 8: Play in the Schools of Tomorrow
Chapter 9: The Global Play Summit
Appendices
1. The Declaration of Play - Call to Halt the War on Childhood
2. The Play Stages of a Child's School Life
3. 7 Steps to Help Children and Schools Thrive
4. Play Recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics
Resources
Source Notes
Index
Pasi Sahlberg is Professor of Education Policy at Gonski Institute
for Education, University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.
He is a Finnish educator who has studied education systems around
the world. His work on learning through play has brought him the
2013 Grawemeyer Award, the 2014 Robert Owen Award, and the 2016
Lego Prize. His interests include teaching and learning in school,
teacher education, and equity and quality of education.
Former Senior Specialist at World Bank, Director General of the
Ministry of Education in Finland, and Visiting Professor at Harvard
University, he now lives with his family in Sydney.
William Doyle is a New York Times bestselling author and TV
producer for networks including HBO, The History Channel, and PBS.
Since 2015 he has served as Fulbright Scholar, Scholar in Residence
and Lecturer on Media and Education at University of Eastern
Finland, a Rockefeller Foundation Resident Fellow, and advisor to
the Ministry of Education and Culture of Finland.
"The definitive account of how educational policy-makers,
presumably well-intentioned, have gone completely astray, in the
United States and elsewhere, along with a vivid and convincing
account of how to restore play to its proper place in the lives of
children." -- Howard Gardner, Hobbs Professor of Cognition and
Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education
"Inspirational, well written, and superbly documented, this book is
a gift to the next generation. Adding play back into children's
hurried and stressed lives might just be the elixir that will help
them thrive in a workforce of thinkers, innovators, and
collaborators. Thank you Doyle and Sahlberg for giving us a road
map so that we can put our educational systems back on course." --
Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Lefkowitz Faculty Fellow in Psychology at
Temple University
"Sahlberg and Doyle whack us in the head with the reality that 21st
Century skills require old-fashioned learning as children. Play is
the analog of life - observing the world, identifying challenges,
taking risks, failing, problem-solving again and again, struggling
to find consensus with others, absorbing defeats with grace and
celebrating victories with exuberance. What builds successful
adults is the ability to rise undaunted to opportunities, build
relationships, feed curiosity and seize the joy that is at the
heart of learning and of living!" -- Michael Rich, Associate
Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and author of Ask
the Mediatrician
"Let the Children Play should be in the hands of every single
teacher, parent and policy maker who touch the lives of the
children they serve. Sahlberg and Doyle clearly articulate and
demand that we wake up and finally acknowledge that children have
the fundamental right to play in school. This is a compelling
vision of the power of play and what we can do to ensure it comes
off the 'endangered species' list and back into every school around
the
world." -- Michael J. Hynes, Ed.D., Superintendent of Schools for
the Patchogue-Medford School District in New York
"Let the Children Play is a passionate, eloquent and substantiated
argument for a radical change of priorities in how many parents,
educators and policymakers provide for the education, health and
well being of children." -- from the Foreword by Sir Ken
Robinson
"We have undervalued the role of play in school to our own
detriment as educators, and that of our students. In a culture
where standardized testing has crowded out inquisitiveness and
play, our students don't get an opportunity to tinker and
experiment without high stakes judgments. Without play, teachers
don't get to learn from watching their students be unbound by their
inner creative selves. When children play, we observe the
possibility of their
imagination, and retool our structured classroom learning to create
activities that model the authentic play and joy of students. It's
a missed opportunity to learn from a feedback loop on what comes
naturally
to children. Play can liberate the power of inquiry in classrooms,
that ironically can produce better test scores. Kudos for being so
bold with this book!" -- Eric Contreras, Principal, Stuyvesant High
School, New York City
"Play develops our imagination and capacity to collaborate and is
what makes us human. Sahlberg and Doyle have written a brilliant
and compelling manifesto for bringing play back into the lives of
children. Let the revolution begin!" -- Tony Wagner, best-selling
author of The Global Achievement Gap and Creating Innovators.
"Insightful... An excellent offering for parent activists,
education students, and school administrators."--Library
Journal
"The book convincingly shows the reader that all children deserve
to grow physically, emotionally, academically and socially--the
benefits of real play nurture the soul as well as the development
of the whole child. What's more important than that?"
--School Administrator Magazine
"The book makes a case not only for the value of free play but the
necessity of it: It is where children in fact develop the social
and emotional abilities that they need... A clarion call back to
the world of childhood joy and exploration."
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