The Function and Value of Play It has been estimated by students of the subject that time equivalent to four of the first five years of a child's life is given over to play. Of the next five years, three, and of the third five years, two are spent in play; making a total of nine recreative years in our first fifteen. Are these years wasted? If soothe human race has thriven remarkably for having squandered so much time. It is evident on the contrary that play rightly deserves the unconscious emphasis which it has received; and its value increases in proportion as it is recognized as a factor in the conservation of the race as well as in the development of civilization.
Wuen Pray is Worx.
Play is unquestionably an instinct, the purpose of which is the education and re-creation of the individual. Such was the theory of Karl Groos, now generally accepted. But it is a mistake to identify play solely with childhood,, and to consider the outcroppings of playful instinct in us adults as childish. Children do not really play, for play is their work. Not only do children prefer the imitation of serious enterprises to ordinary games, but. in cither case they enter into their recreation with a seriousness of purpose and adherence to rule which baffles us.
Is there a boy who would not rather play soldier, engine-driver, or builder than hide-and-seek? And if he plays the latter, does he not enter into the game with more zest if he is an Indian on the warpath in the forest for scalps? I once knew a little girl in Calcutta to whom play was more serious than scientific experiments with asbestos were to her father. She came to me one day with a doll in her arms. Tears—real, heartbroken tears—were streaming down her face, and she sobbed as if her heart would break, Thinking her doll had been broken I asked if I could help her mend it. But she replied ha tween sobs, "This isn't a dolly: this is my baby. My husband (she was about four years old) has been beating me and has thrown me and my child out of our house." Nothing would console her till she took me to the (empty) chair where her "husband"' was sitting, and at her direction I successfully besought the cruel father to take back his heartbroken family!
Apventures tu No May's Layo.
But as horizons broaden and the adventurous and romantic veil of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.