In this post, MORE-UFT member and Chapter Leader Lauren Monaco motivates a resolution defending play during the school day. This resolution will be on the agenda of the November 2025 UFT Delegate Assembly.

“Democracy as an ethical ideal calls upon men and women to build communities in which every individual has the necessary opportunities and resources to realize his or her potential”. - John Dewey (1859-1952)

The purpose of public education is to appropriately meet each learner’s needs and prepare them to be active members of a diverse and inclusive democratic society, in addition to teaching the skills and knowledge base that prepare students for college and career. A responsible education considers the whole individual and is responsive to their academic, social, and emotional needs. Teachers don’t just teach subjects or curricula, they teach students. Ideally, in addition to content knowledge, teachers teach students how to think critically, solve problems, collaborate, and foster their students’ curiosity.

High-quality education is grounded in the research of human development and is responsive to the group as well as individual needs. A diverse body of research proves how essential play is for children, adolescents, and adults to lead healthy, productive lives. The idea of play as a process for learning and understanding is not new. Numerous theorists, educators, and child development psychologists have written extensively on how play is the ideal way children learn and is important for its own sake. Jean Piaget and Maria Montessori are both famous for their assertion that ‘play is the work of children’. In 1990, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child enshrined play as a human right. Yet, 35 years later, play is often seen as frivolous and nonessential. The American Academy of Pediatrics has written extensively on how important play is to children’s health, well-being, and their ability to meet developmental milestones. Yet, in today’s schools, play is often a luxury that, when present at all, is doled out as a reward for completing what is deemed more “academic” work. Sadly, well-meaning education initiatives have overshadowed play as an important aspect of our intellectual and physical development, and with devastating consequences.

“Kindergarten has changed radically in the last two decades in ways that few Americans are aware of. … Many kindergartens use highly prescriptive curricula geared to new state standards and linked to standardized tests. In an increasing number of kindergartens, teachers must follow scripts from which they may not deviate. These practices, which are not well grounded in research, violate long-established principles of child development and good teaching. It is increasingly clear that they are compromising both children’s health and their long-term prospects for success in school.” - Edward Miller and Joan Almon, Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School

Over the past two decades, early childhood classrooms have changed drastically. Developmentally appropriate learning practices that were once embedded in play, exploration, and social learning have been replaced with a focus on explicit academic skills, assessments, and highly prescriptive curricula. Reports like, “Crisis in Kindergarten” and articles like, “Is Kindergarten the New First Grade?”; “More Work, Less Play in Kindergarten.” “The New First Grade: Too Much Too Soon?”; and “Kindergarten or ‘Kindegergrind?’” brought some of these changes to light in the early 2000s. Academic demands on our youngest students have only increased since then.

“The opposite of Play is not work, it’s depression.” -Brian Sutton-Smith

Concurrently, we’ve seen an increase in childhood stress and behavior issues coupled with a decrease in student emotional regulation and executive functioning. These issues have been compounded by the added complexity of the COVID-19 Crisis and its impact on children’s schooling and ability to socialize with their peers. Qualitative data from Early Childhood (P-2) practitioners across the country has highlighted an overwhelming number of teachers expressing sadness for their students and frustration with the increase of external expectations placed upon the classroom and the resulting negative behaviors. Many teachers have cited the loss of developmentally appropriate practices as a reason they left, or are considering leaving, the field of education.

“ In play, a child always behaves beyond his average age, above his daily behavior. In play, it is as though he were a head taller than himself. ” - Lev Vygotsky, Russian psychologist (1896–1934)

The false dichotomy that play is the opposite of learning has been debunked in a multitude of studies. Play has been scientifically studied and shown to contribute to the well-being of humans throughout their lives. The research that supports this view is not just from the field of education, but also from other fields, including medicine, neuroscience, psychology, and ethology.

In the 1970s, the German government sponsored a large-scale longitudinal study of graduates from 50 play-based kindergartens and compared them with the graduates of 50 academic direct-instruction-based kindergartens. Though they found some initial academic gains of direct instruction, by 4th grade, the children from the direct-instruction kindergartens performed significantly worse than those who attended the play-based kindergartens on every measure that was used. In particular, they were less advanced in reading and mathematics and had difficulties socially and emotionally. In fact, by 6th grade -- the differences between the two groups were even larger and proved to be statistically highly significant. This study has been replicated in other countries, with different demographic groups, and they all came to the same conclusion: too much emphasis on structured activities has a negative effect on children’s executive functioning, emotional regulation, and academic achievement.

“Children need the freedom and time to play. Play is not a luxury. Play is a necessity.” - Kay Redfield Jamison, Contemporary American professor of psychiatry

Neuroscience studies have also shown how play impacts the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for executive functioning and emotional regulation, and how play is brain-building. Our brain needs activation from the environment to create new connections. Very few neurons in our cortex are connected at birth. Play primes the brain for the development of new neural pathways and the establishment of new connections. Play is essential to crafting the neural pathways that form our social-emotional, physical, and cognitive abilities.

“A child loves his play, not because it’s easy, but because it’s hard. ” -Benjamin Spock, American pediatrician (1903–1998)

Play isn’t the same as “fun”. Play is a mental state where one has agency, is engrossed in an activity, and is self-motivating. Play-states also encourage problem-solving and risk-taking. The more often children are in a play-state, the more new brain circuits form. The more children and adolescents are engaged in a play-state, the more skills and brain circuits form. Play quite literally wires our brains. Play increases our resilience and activates pathways in the brain that combat the effects of stress. Play allows children to take risks and develop skills of perseverance and persistence. Play is not frivolous—it is fundamental. And it is especially essential for children from marginalized communities who face greater systemic barriers to opportunity. Free and ongoing education, grounded in research on human development and learning, is essential to any serious vision of educational equity.

“Choice-time”, Inquiry, and Experiential Learning are natural ways to incorporate grade-level expectations into play in the elementary years (e.g.; labeling block structures, making menus for dramatic play, drawing and labeling pictures, making books and museums tied to classwide studies, tidying up blocks by sorting into groups of five and having children count by 5’s as they are put away., building bridges to hold weight, recreating a neighborhood in blocks or other materials, etc.). It is during play that children test out what they know and risk making mistakes in order to learn. For adolescents - finding way to incorporate play into academic investigations might look more like students having options for creative assignments, field studies, incorporating drama into history lessons, or building and tinkering in physics classes. The research on how humans learn suggests a combination of play-based learning and direct instruction yields the best results in a range of educational outcomes.

“It is no accident that all democracies have put a high estimate upon education; that schooling has been their first care and enduring charge. Only through education can equality of opportunity be anything more than a phrase. Accidental inequalities of birth, wealth, and learning are always tending to restrict the opportunities of some as compared with those of others. Only free and continued education can counteract those forces which are always at work to restore, in however changed a form, feudal oligarchy. Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.” - John Dewey (1859-1952)

A responsible education is one that meets the needs of the whole child—socially, emotionally, and academically. Play is not a distraction from learning. It is the work of children and the means by which they become thinkers, creators, and members of a democratic society. If we are to live up to the ideals of public education as a democratic institution, we must recognize the profound importance of play—not just as a pedagogical choice, but as a matter of educational justice, human development, and social progress.