Peter Gray, Ph.D., research professor at Boston College, is author of Free to Learn (Basic Books) and Psychology (Worth Publishers, a college textbook now in its 8th edition). He has conducted and published research in neuroendocrinology, developmental psychology, anthropology, and education. He did his undergraduate study at Columbia University and earned a Ph.D. in biological sciences at Rockefeller University. His current research and writing focus primarily on children's natural ways of learning and the life-long value of play. He a founding member of the nonprofit Alliance for Self-Directed Education and a founding board member of the nonprofit Let Grow. His own play includes not only his research and writing, but also long distance bicycling, kayaking, back-woods skiing, and vegetable gardening.

Joe

Welcome, everyone, to another episode from The Caring Instinct. This time we've got Peter Gray, who's amazing. He's a research professor at Boston College. He's the author of Free to Learn, a really great book. He does a lot of work about self directed education and is a huge champion of play.

Joe

So everything about play we go into here. What did you think?

Olga

It was incredible just meeting one of the people who, is it fair to say? he's really changed both our lives and the way we parent.

Joe

Yeah, it was one of the first books I read, actually, back when I was a teacher and just opened up alternative education or a completely different way of seeing children and how we raise children really puts you at ease that they know what they're doing.

Olga

Exactly. His writing is the best antidote for an anxious parent. My child isn't reading yet. Go and read Peter Gray's article in Psychology Today.

Joe

And he's got, if you sign up to him on Substack as well, he's got lots of good stuff every week, doesn't he?

Olga

Yes. So enjoy. Follow us wherever you're listening and remember that at www.thecaringinstinct.com. You will find the full podcast experience with all the video clips, the bio, the links and the full transcript, all the good stuff. And sign up to see what other things we've got in store for you.

Joe

Hello. Welcome, Peter.

Peter

I'm happy to be here. Good morning or good afternoon for you? Yeah.

Joe

Thanks so much for coming. I read your book. I've worked in the, I don't know if you've heard of the Sudbury school here in the UK? The first one.

Peter

No, I didn't. I may have heard of it, but if I did, I've forgotten about it. Yeah. So there is a Sudbury model school?

Joe

There is, yeah. Yeah. Everyone's mad about you there. So we worked there for a couple of years, three years. I think I was at the beginning when it started.

Joe

It's great to have you here. We talk a lot about you.

Peter

Great, great.

Olga

And at the moment we got behind a campaign in the UK that intends to transform break time at school, or as you would probably say recess, and to bring more play in. And you write at the moment a lot about recess and lunchtime, how that time in the school day is giving way to more and more learning and what's happening, or learning as adults think it should be.

Peter

Yeah. Learning is the adult thing. It'd be. I hate this word of learning as what happens in school, as if learning doesn't happen in other settings, as if learning is not happening during recess. You know, people use this crazy language.

Peter

Should there be more time for learning or more time for play?

Olga

Exactly.

Peter

But play is how children learn. You know, it's the primary means by which children learn. But that's the way people talk.

Joe

People have accepted this goes together for maybe the first five years, but then they, okay, now it's apart. Now it's two different things. There comes a point where people just aren't having it.

Peter

Yeah. So what has happened, as I've described in the Substack letters that you've mentioned, that, you know, really beginning kind of around the beginning of the 21st century, but in some cases earlier, recess was being greatly shortened. Lunch period was being reduced to such small period of time that kids admit some schools really don't even have time to eat lunch. By the time they go to the washroom and wash their hands and stand online in a 20 minutes lunch period, they have maybe five minutes, if even that, to gobble down their food. It's just crazy what we have done, taking away lunch period.

Peter

Years before that, schools were already, in some cases, eliminating recess or what you call break or greatly reducing it. So children have far less opportunity to play and actually socialize at school than they did in the past.

Joe

And what are the consequences of that?

Peter

Well, what we have seen in the United States is a huge increase in anxiety, depression, even suicide among school age children, especially teenagers. But we're seeing these even among younger children. These rates had been rising for decades previously for reasons that I've written about. Then they leveled off for a period of time beginning around 1990. Actually, the mental health of kids improved a little bit between about 1990 and about 2010 or so, and then they began to shoot up again.

Peter

All these problems of anxiety, depression, suicide are rising again over beginning around 2010, up until about 2020. And this coincided with the change in schooling in the United States is called the Common Core program, which is the system where all schools within a state, within each state in the United States have a similar core program. The teachers are required to teach according to that core. They are given far less freedom to vary what they're doing in the classroom. We have now standardized testing, which is being used to evaluate schools and teachers, which has created a lot of anxiety even among the teachers, and then that gets translated onto the kids.

Peter

So I'm convinced that this latest increase in depression, anxiety, suicide, is the result of these, largely the result of these changes in how we're doing schooling.

Joe

Would you say that play is also disappearing over the years outside of school?

Peter

Play had already disappeared outside of school. We were losing play outside of school. Through the last portion of the 20th century, children were less and less able to just go out and play. And I think that there hasn't been a lot of change in that because it was almost totally lost by about 1990. It hasn't changed since then.

Peter

What has changed is what's being allowed in school and the way school is changing. What's changing more recently, of course, I've been trying to do everything, working with the nonprofit organization Let Grow to bring more play to children's lives, both in and out of school. But I think this latest increase that everybody's talking about in the United States is this latest increase in anxiety. Depression is not because of reduction in play outside of school. That was already gone.

Peter

It's because of the change in school pressure, the anxiety being produced by the achievement pressure, the competitiveness of schooling. Today, people want to blame it on social media and smartphones, but I am not convinced by that evidence. I have summarized the evidence that is far more likely to be the result of the changes in how we're doing school when here in the United States, there are people who want to make it illegal for our children to have smartphones or to be able to be on social media. They think that if that were done, that might solve the problem. I have compiled evidence that it's really not smartphones.

Peter

The evidence is not strong that it's smartphones. I think there are some problems with smartphones. I think that children need to be advised about them. You know, that there are problems for adults as well as for kids as well as benefits. But, you know, when you ask children what's bothering them, and there have been some surveys in the United States, they say school, they're very clear about it.

Peter

So there was a survey done in 2013 by the American Psychological association called Stress in America. People of all ages were surveyed about the amount of anxiety they're experiencing. They found that teenagers in school were the most anxious people in the country. And when they asked them, what is the cause of your anxiety? 83% said, school.

Peter

Nothing else came close. They could list more than one thing. So school wasn't the only thing they mentioned, but nothing else came close in terms of the frequency that it was mentioned. School pressure is what's making kids anxious.

Olga

Is it the pressure of college, having to go to a good college, and so much being at stake there seemingly, or is it the school itself or both?

Peter

It's interesting. I think it's both. I think that there is a lot of pressure, unrealistic pressure that kids are feeling about importance of going on to an elite college or university. There's pressure from parents. Many schools pride themselves and how many kids they send on to such universities.

Peter

And so there is pressure. And there's some evidence, in fact, there's considerable evidence, that the schools that are most pressuring kids in that way, the schools that one researcher classifies as high achievement, schools where they pride themselves in the high test scores, and then how many kids go on to elite colleges from those schools? That's where the suffering is greatest, actually, that's where the anxiety, depression, even suicide is greatest. Binge drinking, use of illegal drugs, all kinds of evidence of psychological suffering as a result of that kind of pressure. But kids everywhere in all schools are feeling pressured.

Peter

Even kids in elementary school are feeling pressured. And they're not necessarily thinking about college then, but nevertheless, they're being pressured by their parents, by others for high grades. But the other thing that's happened is school. You know, when you take away recess, when you take away the lunch period, when you have teachers who themselves are anxious because they're being evaluated based on test scores, you are creating, you are creating a cauldron of anxiety. The school is simply a place where now everybody's anxious.

Peter

The school principal is anxious, the teachers are anxious, and that gets transferred onto the children. So I think that, that it's not just the sense of, will I make it into a good college or not. It's also, you're just in this anxiety provoking situation every day when you're in school.

Joe

What does that do to our children? Because some people will say, that's a great place to learn. You know, they're happy to come alongside that anxiety.

Peter

So, I think so. You know, children are people, right? Children are human beings. Children have every right to be happy.

Peter

Just like you have a right to be happy, Olga has a right to be happy. I have a right to be happy. Children have a right to be happy. It is cruel to make them unhappy. I don't care anything about the learning issue.

Peter

If you're making children unhappy, you are doing something harmful that ought to be obvious to people. You know, that should not be a trade off. Let's make them miserable so they'll score higher. Test scores. The test scores have little to do with any real learning that has anything to do with the real world.

Peter

This is not a reasonable trade off.

Joe

I mean, it's so obvious. But I guess my question is, how do people, in your eyes, where do people make the wrong turn with this? How did we end up in this place?

Peter

I think part of it is we ended up in this place because the changes, for the most part, have been gradual. We had somewhat sudden changes with the onset of Common Core around 2010. But for the most part, the changes have been gradual. We gradually took play away from children. It wasn't like we just suddenly took it away.

Peter

We gradually increased the amount of time that children are in school. We gradually increased school pressure. So there was never any point where suddenly everything was different from what it was before. So people, when changes are gradual, people don't notice them, you know, so it's a little bit like that story. You know, you put the frog in the water and you gradually increase the temperature of the water.

Peter

The frog doesn't notice. It turns out that's a false story. But it's a good analogy, supposedly, right? So we've made these changes gradually. So people think, well, it's just natural.

Peter

Kids, of course, they go through this. This is part of teenagers. It's hormones. It's something like this that causes anxiety and depression. And so people aren't attributing it to the changes that have occurred in the culture.

Peter

It's only somebody who's seen it or somebody who's so. Well, there are some people who recognize it, but many people don't. I also think there's a strong tendency for people to bury their heads in the sand about this. They don't want to acknowledge that our policies regarding school, our policies regarding children's supposed safety, where we're not letting them go out to play because we believe it's dangerous for them to do that, that it's our policies as adults, as people who are supposed to be looking out for the welfare of children that is causing the problem. It's a lot easier for people to say, oh, it's those greedy technology and social media companies that are causing the problem.

Peter

So I think that, you know, it's partly a psychological defense. We don't want to admit that it's us causing the problem. We would rather say it's those greedy companies that are  hooking our children on social media that's causing the problem. I think that's part of it. The other thing is, you know, this is, all of this comes from good intentions.

Peter

It really does come from good intentions. So we began to restrict children's outdoor play and activity because we were afraid that it was dangerous for them to be out there. Back in the 1970s and eighties, there were a couple of cases, very much publicized cases of young boys who were snatched away by strangers and murdered. Just two cases, you know, out of millions and millions of kids out there playing, right? So this is an extraordinarily rare thing.

Peter

But because it's rare, it's news, right? And so it got into every paper publicist. This was huge news. It led to, in the United States, to what was called stranger danger,  you know, strangers are dangerous, and we can't allow our children to be exposed to strangers on the street. And the change became, you began to feel you're a negligent adult if you allow your child out there without somebody immediately with them, some adult with them to protect them.

Peter

And that became a norm, almost a moral norm. You are an immoral parent if you are letting your children go out and play. So that was done for good reason. Believe it wasn't a good reason, but people believed it was a good reason. People believed that traffic became a little bit more in some places, and so people were trying to protect their children from traffic.

Peter

So that, and then increased schooling came about. You know, also beginning around that same time, there was a book published, government mandated, a government funded study and book published in the United States in the late 1980s that contended that our schooling system was not up to snuff compared to, in particular, the schools in East Asia. So once we had standardized international testing, United States children weren't scoring as high as children in some of the cities in China and South Korea and Japan. And so the title of the book that was published was called A Nation At Risk. The claim was, we are at risk.

Peter

I'm not sure what they saw the risk as coming from as whether this is an economic risk because we're not going to be able to compete economically because our children aren't learning as much in school or somehow that it's going to be a defense risk. There was a time long before that we were afraid of the Russians, that they were educating their children better than ours. This was way back in the fifties. And we began to shift education a little bit because of that. These are sort of somewhat ridiculous claims that people believe them.

Peter

So that book led to changes in schooling to try to make school in the United States a little bit more like school in East Asian countries. Nobody who was talking about those changes acknowledged that rates of suicide among school age kids were already astronomical in those countries. We should have been able to see what are the consequences of that kind of education. But we didn't. We didn't look at it.

Peter

And so. But so this was all made because we wanted our children to have a better education. Parents began to believe that their children will get better jobs if they do well in school. One other thing that played a role in this in the United States also beginning around the 1980s, the 1980s was when the biggest increase in, in all of this was occurring. The biggest increases in anxiety, depression and suicide were occurring in the 1980s.

Peter

And so the other thing that happened here in the United States in 1980 was that Ronald Reagan was elected president, and we had an administration and a Congress that favored the rich. And so the tax structure was changed so that the wealthy were paying much less taxes. Relatively speaking. The poor were paying more. We took away much of the safety net.

Peter

Labor unions were more or less destroyed at that time. And the result of all of this was an increase in the gap between rich and poor in the United States. Now, when there's a big gap between rich and poor, parents become anxious. They want their kids now to succeed. The whole society becomes more competitive that when there's this big gap.

Peter

You know, back before the 1980s, parents were fairly secure. Their kids, whether they went to college or not, or whether they went to fancy college or that their kids would get a job, their kids would make a living, their kids would produce grandchildren for them. They weren't going to be homeless on the street. But when this gap becomes bigger, when you begin to have more homeless people, then you begin to worry more about your kids. And if you fall for the propaganda that high grades in school and getting into college or in especially a fancy college are going to protect your children from being homeless, then you put the pressure on.

Peter

I think that has played a role, and that's playing a continuous role because there's a gap between rich and poor is still there, and it's even increasing over time. Parents are anxious about their children's future, more so than in the past. And this anxiety gets passed on to the children themselves. So they get anxious. They begin to feel like, if I don't get high grades, if I don't get into college, I'm going to be a failure in life.

Peter

Now, this is not true, but this is the belief that people have, people have bought into this myth. The truth of the matter is this college isn't that much of a protection. There are, there are people graduating from college who can't get good jobs, and there are good jobs out there that don't require college. You know, plumber, lawyer, electrician, carpenters. They're making a lot of money, and they don't require college, but we believe that you've got to go to college if you're going to get a good job.

Joe

What comes up for me, as you talk about that anxiety, we're kind of stuck in this loop with it all. It's not only facilitating play, it's a big part of this is addressing that anxiety that we have as a society, as parents. It's about addressing that anxiety.

Peter

Yes. I mean, we've got to. I think that that's part of it is if parents could recognize that it doesn't make that much difference. I published a blog post, you know, don't worry about what college your children get into or even whether they get into college or not. It doesn't make that much of a difference.

Peter

There are actually research studies showing it doesn't make that much of a difference when you control for background factors. So, I mean, the kids who go to fancy colleges generally are coming from wealthy homes. And so, of course they're also going to do better because they inherit wealth. They inherit all the status that comes with having wealthy parents, all those connections. So the reason that graduates of schools like Harvard and Stanford and those kinds of schools do better doesn't have to do with anything they're learning in college.

Peter

It just has to do with the fact that they're better off to begin with the ones who go there than the ones who go to the local state university or just to a community college. If you control for those background factors, the research shows it really doesn't matter what college you go to. And there's well done studies showing that, I've published blog posts summarizing those studies, but that word hasn't gotten out to enough parents. First of all, one advantage of not sending your kid to fancy private college is you could save a lot of money. You know, the state colleges, the smaller colleges are less expensive.

Joe

I have a question from Kate, who set up the Sudbury school here, East Kent Sudbury, and she noticed that some of the children will take routes which don't focus on exams. They don't take the exam route in school. And there's a lot of anxiety for parents, for the children that decide to do that. The exams are not for them, that they make their way in life without taking exams. Can you speak to that kind of dynamic?

Peter

When I did my first research study of the graduates of the Sudbury Valley school, one of the questions I had in mind, quite an honest question, was, so the fact that they're not doing traditional school, the fact they don't have any grades, the fact that they have never taken any exams, is this affecting their future in any kind of negative way? And what I found, and I don't know to what degree this is unique to the United States, is that those who wanted to go on to higher education didn't have any problem going on to higher education, even though they had never taken any exams, even though they had no transcript of grades. They managed to get into four year colleges if that's what they wanted to do. There are various ways they did it, and I documented that how they do it, and this is still happening. We did a more recent study, and I've done studies of homeschoolers who use the method called unschooling, where there's no curriculum and they're not testing the children and so on.

Peter

And they also do fine, you know, even in terms of getting into higher education, if that's what they want to do. So it may be a little bit different in some other countries here. Turns out, in the United States, anybody can go to college. Anybody can go to college. You can be a flunk out from high school and go to college.

Peter

There will always be a college that will accept you. They're not going to turn down your money. We have a good program in the United States of community colleges. These are two year colleges, and they will literally accept anybody. And the tuition is very low.

Peter

So kids who can't get into, for whatever reason, into a four year college go there. And if you do well enough there, if you manage to show I can do those college courses in this two year college, then you can use that as a transcript to go to a four year college. That's the route that some people who are graduates of a school like Sudbury Valley take. But there are still some that go right on to even elite colleges. They just talk their way into it.

Peter

In some way. They're special. They're different. Elite colleges, at least the United States, are often looking for people who are different, who have something to bring. They have a different kind of background.

Peter

They've done something interesting.

Olga

They might also be more robust in terms of their mental health, and they might not put as much strain on the college counselling services.

Peter

I think that's true. And whether or not the colleges recognize that, I'm not sure. But what they do recognize is that the ones who are coming from a school like Sudbury Valley or from unschooling background, if they're going on to college, they're going on for a good reason. They're not going on because they feel they have to, they don't have parents who are forcing them to go to college. They don't have a sense of, I can't learn in any other way, so I have to go to college.

Peter

You know, if they're going to college, they have a good reason for it and they can articulate that reason and they can write an essay that's very compelling and very authentic about why they're going on, why they've chosen this college as opposed to some other college. And that can be very impressive because most kids going on to college don't really know why they're going on to college, except that they just feel, you know, it's like 13th grade, they've got, just like they had to go to high school, they've got to go to college. And so they're going on to college. But kids who are coming from this untraditional background, they don't have that attitude. And if they're going on, they've got a reason for it and they can articulate it.

Peter

And this makes them look interesting to the admissions officers.

Olga

I'm very curious about something you mentioned earlier, that the common core put more pressure on the teachers and took away a lot of agency so the teachers didn't have or don't have as much agency in how to teach the curriculum. Did I understand that correctly?

Peter

Yes. I'll tell you one case example of this, and then I'll talk more generally. I have a sister who doesn't have the same radical ideas about schooling that I do. She had been teaching very happily in a public middle school for many years. The kids in the school liked her.

Peter

She felt she was doing good things for these kids. Common Core came along. There was a new principal at this school who was much younger than my sister, much less experienced than my sister in education, but who felt the commitment to follow the rules of Common Core, which meant that everybody is supposed to be teaching the same way in every classroom, and the orientation has to be towards being able to score well on the required exam that every, every student in every school has to take, and that is being used to evaluate school principles and teachers. Right. So suddenly she now had this younger person as the principal who was telling her that she couldn't do the more creative things that she was doing in the school, the things that she could see the kids like, she couldn't vary what she was doing.

Peter

The result of that is she became very depressed. She began to feel like, I'm doing more harm to these children than good. And she took a year off for depression medical leave because she felt depressed. And after that year off, she said, there's no way I can go back. And so she resigned from her position.

Peter

She was not yet at retirement age, so she resigned without a full pension that she otherwise would have been able to get if she had hung on for a few more years. But she just couldn't. That story has been replicated many times across the country. Many teachers, longtime teachers, and oftentimes the best teachers who resigned or retired early because of Common Core, they could see the harm that was being done. There been a survey of teachers asking, you know, how did school change with Common Core?

Peter

And the great majority say it became more stressful for everybody. It became more anxiety provoking for everybody. There's even also a survey of school psychologists who say the same thing. So it's very clear that with Common Core, there was a boost. School was already becoming more anxious, anxiety provoking.

Peter

There was already more focus on testing scores, there was already reductions in lunch periods and recesses and so on, but there was an additional boost to all of that when Common Core came into effect.

Olga

It's the same story.

Joe

It's the same thing here. As well isn't it, Olga?

Peter

It's very interesting that. Yeah, that I think in the UK, I believe, also has shown an increase in anxiety and depression over these same kinds of years. That has not been so true for the EU in general. I've looked at the data and it's not so true for there's been no, no overall increase in the. In the nations of the European Union over these years, at least in youth suicide rates, because those data are available and I've looked at them.

Peter

So this is not universal, these changes, but I think it has occurred in the UK, I think it's occurred in Australia and a few other places, as well as in the United States.

Joe

Well, there was quite a big story here recently, a headteacher, because we have this thing called Ofsted, and they go into schools and they grade the schools. I think you can get four grades. And because she committed suicide while she was waiting for her school to get, get the result in, got a bad result. It was in the news and there's been a lot of campaigns to take this out of school, but I think it was just yesterday when it was decided, no, we're going to keep these here so that they're here to stay for now.

Olga

Yeah, that's also. Teaching is a creative profession. It should be. It's a playful profession at its best. And the play has been taken away.

Olga

The same is happening to the adults with exactly the same results of anxiety, depression.

Peter

Exactly. Yeah, that's right. That's right. I mean, you know, we adults and kids are not that different. We all need play, we all need relaxation.

Peter

We all don't like to be micromanaged. We like to have, we like to be creative, we like to be, have a certain degree of autonomy, make our own, some of our own decisions. Take that away and you get depression, anxiety, even suicide in some cases.

Olga

Can we talk about the cure, please? What can we do? How can we let play back in?

Peter

Oh, the cure.

Olga

Will it take care of everything if we just do?

Peter

So. I know that you have a movement in the UK to try to bring play into the schools, and I applaud that. And maybe that'll. And let's hope that catches on. I think that there's two things we can do.

Peter

One thing we can do is to really make efforts to make play available and to make it available in ways that parents see is safe enough that we're not going to, we're not going to convince parents, at least in the United States, we're not going to convince parents to just send their kids out to play as they once did. The fears are too great. And also, even if you do send your child out to play, there's nobody else out there to play with, so.

Olga

Exactly. And the social services will be after you.

Peter

And the social services will be after you and so on and so forth. So even parents who want to do that, there are all these constraints on doing it. It doesn't work. I talk with parents. So what could you do?

Peter

So one possibility you could do is get together with other parents in your neighborhood. Get to know. One of the problems is, at least the United States, is most people don't know their neighbors anymore. People used to know their neighbors. If you don't know your neighbors, maybe you think that that neighbor might be a child molester, right?

Peter

So you want to get to know your neighbors. You want to get to know, especially the neighbors who have kids and then maybe get together and talk about with your neighbors about the value of play. And wouldn't it be great if we could get our kids together to play and really play, not just in our house with us telling them how to play, but to actually send our kids outdoors like old fashioned parents. And let's not all go out there, but maybe have one adult out there just for safety so everybody feels it's okay to send their kids out. We'll have certain hours of the week.

Peter

We just all send our kids outdoors if it's a busy street area I know of some places have convinced the city to close off traffic during those hours so the kids could actually play in the street. This is rare, but there are some neighborhoods who've actually done this. And so that's one thing that families can do, but it takes initiative. Somebody's got to start this, somebody's got to make, somebody's got to convince their neighbors that, yeah, this is a valuable thing to do, let's do it. And it's safe enough because we'll have a parent out there.

Peter

The other thing that I'm involved with, along as part of a nonprofit organization called Let Grow that I formed in collaboration with Lenore Skenazy, who wrote the book Free Range Kids, and a couple of other people. We are, among other things, working with schools to bring free play to school before school or after school. So schools are great settings for play for the most part. They've got outdoor playgrounds, they've got gymnasiums, they've got art supplies and so on and so forth. So, which just goes to waste because they're not used even during school hours.

Peter

They're not used, but after school hours, the whole place is locked down, you know, so why not make these available for kids before school and, or after school and have a teacher or two there or somebody that you hire to be there for safety who's instructed not to intervene, but to just be there for safety if there's any emergencies. And so we've got this program that the schools who adopted it call it play club. So if you're a member of play club and most kids want to be members of play club, you can join an hour of truly free age-mixed play. All the kids in the elementary school combined, in which your whole outdoor playground, the gymnasium, the hallway between the gym, usually an art room, some other rooms with games in them are available for free play. The only rules during play club are don't hurt anybody and you have to stay on campus.

Peter

No other rules. And the people who are monitoring it, which usually are teachers, are instructed not to intervene unless you feel it is a real emergency, an immediate emergency, and you would have to intervene. They're instructed that play is really the place for children to learn to solve their own problems. It's not, it's that. It's, it disrupts play to have it, undermines the purpose of play if adults are solving kids problems.

Peter

For them, this has been very successful wherever it has been tried. Unfortunately, most schools only do it for 1 hour a week. I would love to see it every day after school for the entire time between when the school day ends and when parents are home from work. It would solve a lot of problems, be a place to play. It would solve the babysitting problem during that period of time when parents are at work.

Peter

As far as I know, no schools have done that so far. But some schools are increasing the number of hours of this. Everybody involved with it is seeing that it's successful. The kids are happier. The staff members who monitor play club are impressed by the kids.

Peter

They develop a better attitude about the kids. It even seems to loosen things up in the school that the teachers who monitor play club do become a little bit more playful than they otherwise would. They become a little more trusting of the kids. They recognize, you know, that kid who seems really stupid in the classroom, he's brilliant out there playing, you know, or that kid who is wearing a hood and he looks like kind of a, kind of a bully. He's really nice to the younger kids out there in the playground.

Peter

So they're developing better attitudes about the children as they watch them in play. So this is a win win situation and, and where it is beginning to spread. It unfortunately was disrupted by COVID, and it's been a while for some schools to come back to it, but we're seeing a pickup, a number of schools doing it. So these are some of the things that, that can be done.

Olga

We used to, when I was about ten, we used to break into the preschool playground after hours because they had all this stuff. They had the swings, they had those tires you could jump on.

Peter

Right?

Olga

But that was, of course, illegal. And then we were caught. Oh, my God. But that is such a good idea to open these spaces after hours.

Peter

I mean, it used to be that school playgrounds were always open. You know, they were places you'd go and play on the weekend. You'd play after school, you'd play. If you got to school early, you'd play outdoors. Now they're, at least in the United States, they're generally chained, locked.

Peter

You know, sometimes there's a, sometimes there's a high fence around them. It'd be even hard to break in.

Olga

OPAL, Outdoor Play and Learning Campaign is to use the hour that schools already have, already provide for break. Often children are given a football so those who are into football can play. That's a provision for them. Even though no matter how football mad a child might be, they might not be in the mood for football every single day. They might want something else.

Olga

Some schools have gone as far as a mile walk. Have you heard of a mile walk, Joe?

Joe

No.

Peter

Wow.

Olga

It is led by teachers and children literally walk around the school playground for a mile in a circle to get their exercise in. There's no play in it. There's no ball and chain either. But that seems like the only thing that's missing in that picture. So the campaign is to transform this hour into good quality play so the children can climb, they can build dens, they can be lightly supervised but not overly managed, and the play can be child led.

Olga

If I can ask you to address those who take those decisions in the UK for the children, what would you say?

Peter

I think that there are people who recognize that children need physical exercise, and those are the people who want to transform free play into some kind of exercise thing that would probably underlie the mile walk. It might even underlie the decision to play football. But everybody has to play football or whatever it is that you're playing, right? There's a tendency to want to turn what used to be recess or break into physical education class so that you are doing something that will improve your physical stamina in some way. And so I think that's part of that kind of thing in the United States, and maybe the same thing is occurring in the UK.

Peter

There is so much concern about children possibly getting hurt or children possibly feeling left out or children possibly feeling teased in one way or another that teachers want to control, set a lot of rules about what you can and cannot do during recess. And so what we find in the United States is there are many cases where, all right, the children have a break, but there are rules. No tag, for example, believe it or not, some schools say no tag. Maybe because somebody one time got hurt playing tag, they got touched too hard or something. No.

Peter

Anything that has the potential of seeming like there might be what gets called sexual abuse of somebody. You know, tag even involves touching, right? I mean, touching becomes something that people become leery of. So no games that involve touching, amazing as that might seem. So the rules become such that you go out there and you begin to wonder, what am I allowed to do or not?

Peter

All the interesting playground equipment, the tall slides, the swings, the teeter totters, have all been removed because at one time, maybe somebody got hurt on them. And so we think they're dangerous. Schools, like everybody else in the United States, are afraid of lawsuits if somebody gets hurt, and then they sue the school. So they take away anything that might cause an injury and take away play that might cause an injury. Now, what is not being recognized by all of these changes, is that the purpose, the real purpose of play?

Peter

The evolutionary purpose of play, the reason children have this biological strong drive to play, is because play is where children learn how to organize themselves. It's where they learn how to take initiative to solve problems, to learn how to judge for themselves what's safe or not safe, to learn how to negotiate with one another, to learn how to deal with people who aren't always nice to them. All of these things. This is what, this is why children play. This is what they learn in play.

Peter

They learn to solve their own problems, they learn how to negotiate, they learn how to deal with minor bullying. Once you have an adult there who is solving all those problems for them or preventing them from occurring, play, the purpose of play gets undermined. No longer do kids have these opportunities to learn these things. That's why I think that's why we have this great increase in anxiety and depression, because children are not learning. I am able to solve problems.

Peter

I am able to deal with the bumps in the road of life because I've learned how to do it in play. Once we take that opportunity away from them, life becomes scary. Things could happen. Somebody could tease me, somebody could bully me, I could, I could fall down and get hurt. I could, you know, and I.

Peter

I don't know how to solve these problems. I've got to depend on other people, and I'm not sure I can always rely on other people to solve my problems. For me, that's the situation we put kids in.

Joe

Play is risky play. The children feeling scared and then finding safety again as well. So they keep experiencing it over again. So when they don't have that, I wonder if they just don't get used to feeling anxious.

Peter

So one way to think of it is risky play is how you how you acquire courage.

Joe

Yeah.

Peter

You know, you, you climb that tree as high as you feel you can climb, and you feel a little bit of fear when you do it and you come down and you feel this sense, I did that. I climbed that tree, I felt this fear, and I managed it. That gives you the kind of courage to feel like I'm a capable person, I'm somebody. I can feel some fear, but it doesn't destroy me. So.

Peter

And all kinds of risky play has that kind of effect. Children naturally play in risky way. Other young mammals also play in risky ways. What are they accomplishing by doing that? They're learning courage.

Peter

They're learning that they can do things that are a little bit dangerous and they can. They can manage it, they can handle it. And that gives them the sense I can handle the stresses that occur in life. Emergencies occur in all of our lives. Something.

Peter

Something happens, we get frightened by it. But if you've had experience playing where you're deliberately putting yourself into a certain degree of fear and then you realize you can manage it, you're less likely to fall apart when a real emergency occurs in non play life.

Joe

And that's why play is actually good for taking an exam, let's say when you're older.

Peter

Even that. Yes, even that.

Joe

Much better than homework club, right.

Olga

What's something that you do for play, Peter?

Peter

Oh, I do a lot of things for play. Most of my play is outdoor. Outdoor play. I spend as much time as I can outdoors because my work is kind of indoors and sedentary. Vegetable gardening is play for me.

Peter

I do a lot of bicycle riding. I've been a bicycle rider my whole life. I go bicycle riding almost every day and it's a joy for me to do so. We live on a river and I can go kayaking right out of my backyard. And I do that for play.

Peter

So these are the ways that I. My primary ways of playing right now. And I spend. I recently injured myself, actually, with a bicycle accident. So I'm not on my bicycle right now and I'm recovering a bit, but I'm so eager to get back to that.

Peter

Normally I spend at least 2 hours outdoors every day in these kinds of activities that I'm just talking about. Be hard for me to not do that because I almost feel like I need it. I'm 80 years old and I feel much younger than 80. And I think it's because of the things I'm doing outdoors that are playful and fun. And incidentally, help keep me physically fit.

Olga

Wishing you a swift recovery so that you're back on your bike soon.

Joe

And thank you so much. I know so many families here that have got a lot from your book, Free to Learn, and you've made a huge difference to a lot of people, a lot of families that I know. So thank you.

Peter

I'm happy to hear that.

Olga

Thank you.

Peter

Okay. Thank you.