WHY USE GROUP GAMES?

(Kamii C., DeVries R)

Part 1

How can teachers of young children use Piaget`s theory in the classroom? Group games stimulate children’s development in unique ways if used with the insights gained from Piaget`s theory.

Children can learn in group games and the teacher can intervenein ways that maximize children’s learning if these games correspond to the following three objectives for early education:

1. In relation to adults, we would like children to develop their autonomy through secure relationships in which adult power is reduced as much as possible.

2. In relation to peers, we would like children to develop their ability to decenter and coordinate different points of view.

3. In relation to learning, we would like children to be alert, curious, critical, and confident in their ability to figure thing out and say what they honestly think. We would also like them to have initiative; come up with interesting ideas, problems, and questions; and put thing into relationships.

Many parents and school administrators object to group games and other types of classroom play. Some parents say “Why should I send my child to school if all he does there is play?” These parents are often more pleased when their children bring worksheets home as evidence of work and learning. To people who believe that learning is proved by reading tests, play seems to be only for amusement and recreation. Group games have a different significance for young children then for older children and adults, and that young children often learn more in group games than in lessons and in exercises.

Games have a special function for young children for whom group games are a new form of activity never possible before. The budding ability to play group games is a major cognitive and social achievement of 5-year-olds which must be fostered before age 5 and further promoted after this age. The purpose of using group games is to foster the development of autonomy, not to teach children how to play these games.

Autonomy was originally a political term which meant self-governing. Autonomy is not the same thing as а complete freedom to do anything one pleases. It involves the mutual regulation of desires, or negotiations, to work out decisions that seem right to all concerned.

Autonomy is sometimes confused with independence as the ability to hold a job, pay one’s bills, and live in society as a responsible citizen. The autonomous individual goes beyond conventions as a set of rules among many other possibilities, and adopts conventional rules only under certain circumstances when they make sense to him. In homes characterized by high adult power, the child cannot develop autonomy. In homes in which the child can participate in the decision-making process, his autonomy has a chance of developing.

Autonomy has not only intellectual, moral aspects but also an emotional aspect. Without a strong self, there can be no autonomous individual. When the child only obeys the rules made by someone else, he or she became undifferentiated from that person. The child’s will is only an extension of that person’s will. In conflicts involving rules, if the teacher intervenes in ways that foster the development of autonomy she also contributes to the child’s development of a strong sense of self.

This can be clarified by the following example: the game broke down because two players wanted to be “It”. The teacher asked the group what could be done about the problem, and the children made a series of suggestions. Each one was considered seriously, and the search for a solution took so much time that the children did not have much time to play the game. The solution came in the end when one of the two children decided to give up wanting to be “It”. The teacher could have suggested the same solution from the beginning, but that would have helped neither the development of autonomy nor the emotional development of the children. From the child’s viewpoint, a large difference exists between giving up a desire voluntarily and giving it up under order. The child’s ego was not violated because she gave up her desire voluntarily. She could convince herself that this was necessary and desirable to do under the circumstances. All the other children had an experience in which they were respected as individuals. Every idea suggested by individual children was carefully considered, and each child’s idea was respected. Above all, the teacher communicated to the children that she believed they were capable of coping with the problem. If the teacher had proposed the solution from the beginning, the children would not have had these experiences that contributed to their emotional development.

(from Group Games in Early Education. Implications of Piaget`s Theory. National Association for the Education of Young Children, Washington D.C., 1996)

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