All My Children

Piaget stresses the importance of the child’s learning the rules of the game in the process of socialization because he must become able to control himself in order to do so, controlling most of all his tendency to act aggressively to gain his goals. Only then can he enjoy the continuous back-and-forth interaction with others that is involved in playing games with partners who simultaneously are also opponents. Thus in many ways the mastery of objects which the child acquired through handling them in play becomes slowly extended to self-mastery through the playing of games, and most important the mastery of his own aggression. The transition is gradual from play (characterized by spontaneity, fantasy, and sudden switches in content from reality to imagination) to game activities, which require considerably more self- control to wait one’s turn and conform to the rules of the game, even if obeying them leads to one’s defeat.

Obeying the rules and controlling one’s selfish and aggressive tendencies is not something that can be learned overnight; it is the end result of a long development. When he begins playing games, a child tries to behave as he could in his earlier play: he changes the rules to suit himself, but then the game breaks down. In a later stage he comes to believe that the rules are unalterable; he treats them as if they were laws handed down from time immemorial which cannot be transgressed under any circumstances, and he views disobeying the rules as a serious crime. Only after the child has thus learned to obey rules and to be able to contain his selfish and aggressive tendencies to the degree that he can avoid bending or flouting the rules does he become able to comprehend and accept the fact that rules are followed not for any abstract reason, but because only if they are can the game proceed in an orderly fashion. Only then, and this is usually quite late in the child’s development—often not until he has become a teenager and sometimes even later than that—can he comprehend that rules are voluntarily agreed upon for the sake of playing the game and have no other validity, and that they can be freely altered as long as all participants agree to such changes. Democracy, based on a freely negotiated consensus that is binding only after it has been formulated and voluntarily accepted, is a very late achievement in human development, even in game-playing.

For this reason Piaget insisted that learning to play by the rules is one of the most important steps in the socialization of the child. When children are free to do as they like in games not supervised by adults, more often than not the arguments over which game they will play, and how, and what rules they should follow take up most of their time, so that little actual playing may get done. Left to their own devices, it may take children hours of fruitful deliberations until they agree on the rules and related issues such as who should begin the game and what is to be the role of each child in it. And this is how it ought to be, if playing games is to socialize children. Only by pondering at great length the advantages of various possible games, and their relative appropriateness to the situation in which they find themselves, such as size of the group, conditions of the playing area, etc., and what rules should apply and why, will they develop their abilities to reason, to judge what is appropriate and what not, to weigh arguments, to learn how consensus can be reached and how all-important such consensus is to the launching of an enterprise. Learning all this is infinitely more significant for the child’s development as a social human being than mastering whatever skills the child may develop by playing the game itself. Yet none of these socializing abilities will be learned if adults attempt to control which games are to be played, or if they prevent experimenting with rules (which they fear may lead to chaos), or if they impatiently push for the game to get started without further delay.

When adults step in to organize the game, they deprive the children of the personal growth they could gain through these engrossing preliminaries. All too often adults overlook the vast difference between the social situations of planning for the game and actually playing it. While they discuss what to play and why, and how to play it, the children are equal partners in a . decision-making process, and they enjoy their ability to participate in a free give-and-take atmosphere. When they do this, they cooperate together, and a most enjoyable spirit of camaraderie is maintained. They feel accepted and secure with each other, because they are being friends who share a lot with each other.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
Learning the Rules of the Game

• Super Nanny, Kids who refuse to follow rules of Games or Play
• A child who cannot play by set rules
• Sitemap
• Learning the Rules of the Game continue...
• Parents and Kids Play: The Double Standard to Explore Talent continue...
• Going to School Part 2
• Magical Dimensions continue...
• The Royal Game of Chest
• Play and Learn: Let your Kids Proving themselves through Contest continue...
• What Play and Game get Kids Fantasy involvement?

Trackback URI | Comments RSS