This is a landmark book. The joyful southernisms suffused throughout allow the essential vitality of the authors’ playful natures to transcend what might otherwise be dull, pedantic, linear prose that would miscarry the essence of play itself. (For those inexperienced with Southern idioms, there is a glossary to get you through.)

Even though I have been studying play behaviors and play science for most of my life, don’t just take my word for it.

Read it!

While play behavior itself eludes clear definition, one concrete characteristic of authentic play is that it produces positive emotions; and a traverse through this book ensures that the reader will have the experience of remembering the emotions of their own play (and non-play). That recollection will enable them to “grok” the nature and importance of play, both cognitively and emotionally. Applying that experience to the classroom is the expertise of the authors.

Frankly, it is this union of cognition and emotion that fixes memory and learning in a positive, optimistic, and progressively more intricate scaffolding that has the student-player searching for more. Thus, play and learning are … almost synonymous. Intrinsic, play-sourced motivation is a major dynamic, within the developing brain, that produces learning.

Parents of young children and professional educators will discover—along with an “aha” about their own play—the guidance to apply the accessible play science in this book to the uniquely individual patterns of play-based learning that await activation in their children and students. And the union of play and learning will strengthen and sustain the foundation for their charges to become more fully alive, more fully human. This book also encourages teachers to become comfortable with their own play nature and incorporate that into the classroom climate, providing permission for teacher and student to embrace their play natures….

Wow!

After much formal training in medicine, psychiatry, and clinical research, I have been enjoying studying play behaviors for 50 years. I have learned that the benefits of play are available for all of us for all of our lives, and the consequences of not playing, particularly early in life, are devastating. I have observed the unfettered play of wild animals in African fields; I have interviewed homicidal men in prisons, finding that play was absent in their lives; and I have spoken with scientists at Harvard and Stanford, and other scientists doing the objective scientific research to identify the biology of play. I’ve learned that play has existed for millions of years, evolving uniquely in each playful species, particularly us homo sapiens.

These varied life experiences have allowed me to see play for what it is, and what it is not; I’ve concluded that is a necessity for the long-term survival for all of us.

Jed and Julie have successfully distilled the core of play knowledge and honed their professionalism in applying it to the classroom.

Wow again!

I particularly like Chapter 23 on individual Play Personalities; there is so much potential benefit to recognizing an individual’s play personality, and its inherent contributions to ongoing curiosity and engagement in the process of learning.

Imagine that through your entire preschool, primary elementary, middle and secondary education, you experienced your parents, teachers, and friends reinforcing what you naturally love; they encouraged you to pursue activities within necessary curriculum that spontaneously engaged you, activities that helped you experience from within your authentic self. If that had happened, your education would have been crafted to fit who you really are, and you would be a more self-secure, competent adult.

Over time, as the concept of Play Personalities enters the mainstream, aware parents will know to notice—from their child’s earliest days—the activities and behaviors that cause their child to be gleeful, to be thrilled; they will be able to discern and nourish the Play Personality of their children. With that awareness they (and subsequently, teachers and other caretakers) can guide the child’s development and education to better custom fit the innate capabilities of each young person.

Given the current norms for parenting and educating our youth, the focus on individual play personality as a teacher priority is not significant. However, the play science that is emerging, specifically that education based on the deeply engaging, natural curiosities of each child, may be perceived as idealistic and impractical.

It is not.

But, that is the wonder of this book. Jed and Julie are showing us how to do better than current test-driven educational norms. They have recognized and are using the growing flood of science that shows that combining play with learning is an optimal means for maximizing our human capacity for competency—for developing in kids their progressive ability to deal with the challenges of our rapidly changing work and home lives.

Yes, we have a long way to go from current norms, but we have evolutionary biology, human nature, science, and the pursuit of joy on our side.

Everyone likes to play. Science has shown that play-suffused curricular engagement is how humans learn best. All teachers want their students to learn quickly and well. Parents are dedicated to their kids’ overall fulfillment and happiness. Given those facts, the logical conclusion is that play—as Jed and Julie demonstrate it—belongs front and center in the classroom. They are showing us the way out of the entrapment of failing mainstream educational practices.

One major obstacle is the belief that work and play are opposites —if you are playing, enjoying what you are doing, you are not working. A normal belief is that the classroom must be a place where one works, memorizing “facts,” studying for tests, grinding out the grades. This landmark book, The Playful Classroom, not only refutes this, it provides in captivatingly fun cadences the truth that PLAY = LEARNING. It brings to light the latest research, which indicates the key to unlocking sustained learning in the classroom is playful engagement. The evidence from scientific research on learning is that a playful learner and a playful teacher form an extraordinarily effective learning system. Add to this the clear understanding of research scientists: the opposite of play is not work, it is depression. Depression results from serious lack of play. Further, national data is showing that the occurrence of depression and suicide among our youth is growing. Our current approaches to developing and educating our youth are too often shutting them down, stifling their abilities versus guiding them to bloom into stable, competent adults.

This book needs to reach beyond classrooms to policymakers and parents nationwide. Policymakers already acknowledge that teaching to standardized tests is not working as hoped, and recognize that educational science can explain why it’s not working. Teachers cannot be playful when driven by reams of testing standards; students are often joyless where the essence of learning is fun. Parents must recognize that choosing their children’s play-dates (versus the children choosing) and setting expectations for extra-curricular activities, music lessons, tutors— fully scheduling their kids—perhaps in the well-intentioned pursuit of an Ivy League college is not the best path for their beloved child.