Play and playfulness, basic features of early childhood education

This article argues that play and playfulness are basic features in early childhood education, but that play curricula can have serious drawbacks. The starting point is the play theory of the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga, a radical critic of the focus on the educational benefits of play. According to Huizinga the essential feature of play is pleasure, and play gives a sense of freedom. When the focus on the educational benefits of play becomes too dominant, the most essential feature of play is lost: children's pleasure. In play children and adults co-construct a shared world, and they are able to modulate their experiences with reality. Recent studies of caregiver-infant communication, neuropsychology and evolutionary psychology are in line with Huizinga's theory. Without play, adapting to and surviving in a complex social world would be difficult. Play helps to overcome differences in power in the caregiver-child relationship, and play is a resource of shared pleasure and creativity.