丟失的游戲

When I was a child in the 1950s， my friends

and I had two educations. We had school， and we also had what I call a hunter-gatherer education. We played in mixed-age neighbourhood groups almost every day after school， often until dark. We played all weekend and all summer long. We had time to explore in all sorts of ways， and also time to become bored and figure out how to overcome 1）boredom， time to get into trouble and find our way out of it， time to daydream， time to immerse ourselves in hobbies， and time to read comics and whatever else we wanted to read rather than the books assigned to us. What I learnt in my hunter-gatherer education has been far more valuable to my adult life than what I learnt in school.

For more than 50 years now， we in the United States have been gradually reducing children’s opportunities to play， and the same is true in many other countries. In his book Children at Play： An American History （2007）， Howard Chudacoff refers to the first half of the 20th century as the “golden age” of children’s free play. By about 1900， the need for child labour had declined， so children had a good deal of free time. But then， beginning around 1960 or a little before， adults began 2）chipping away at that freedom by increasing the time that children had to spend on schoolwork and， even more significantly， by reducing children’s freedom to play on their own， even when they were out of school and not doing homework.

Over the same decades that children’s play has been declining， childhood mental disorders have been increasing. Analyses reveal a continuous， essentially 3）linear， increase in anxiety and depression in young people over the decades， such that the rates of what today would be diagnosed as 4）generalised anxiety disorder and major depression are five to eight times what they were in the 1950s. Over the same period， the suicide rate for young people aged 15 to 24 has more than doubled， and that for children under age 15 has 5）quadrupled.

In an article entitled “The Test Chinese Schools Still Fail” in The Wall Street Journal in December 2010， Jiang Xueqin， a prominent Chinese educator， wrote：“The failings of a 6）rote-memorisation system are well known： lack of social and practical skills， absence of self-discipline and imagination， loss of curiosity and passion for learning.” Meanwhile， Yong Zhao， an American education professor who grew up in China and specialises in comparing the Chinese educational system with the system in the U.S.， notes that a common term used in China to refer to graduates is gaofen dineng， meaning “high scores but low ability”. Because students spend nearly all their time studying， they have little opportunity to be creative， take initiative， or develop physical and social skills： in short， they have little opportunity to play.

Unfortunately， as we move increasingly toward standardised curricula， and as we occupy ever more of our children’s time with schoolwork， our educational results are indeed becoming more like those of the Asian countries. One line of evidence comes from the results of a battery of measures of creativity—called the 7）Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking （TTCT）—collected from normative samples of U.S. schoolchildren ranging from kindergarten through to 12th grade covering several decades. Kyung-Hee Kim， an educational psychologist at the College of William and Mary in Virginia， has analysed these scores and reported that they began to decline in 1984 or shortly after， and have continued to decline ever since.

You can’t teach creativity； all you can do is let it blossom. Little children， before they start school， are naturally creative. Our greatest innovators， the ones we call geniuses， are those who somehow retain that childhood capacity， and build on it， right through adulthood. Albert Einstein， who apparently hated school， referred to his achievements in 8）theoretical physics and mathematics as “9）combinatorial play”. A great deal of research has shown that people are most creative when infused by the spirit of play， when they see themselves as engaged in a task just for fun. It’s hard to be creative when you are worried about other people’s judgments. In school， children’s activities are constantly being judged.

To have a happy marriage， or good friends， or helpful work partners， we need to know how to get along with other people： perhaps the most essential skill all children must learn for a satisfying life. Social play is the academy for learning social skills.

The reason why play is such a powerful way to impart social skills is that it is voluntary. Players are always free to quit， and if they are unhappy they will quit. Every player knows that， and so the goal， for every player who wants to keep the game going， is to satisfy his or her own needs and desires while also satisfying those of the other players， so they don’t quit. To have fun in social play you have to be 10）assertive but not domineering； that’s true for all of social life.

In school， and in other settings where adults are in charge， they make decisions for children and solve children’s problems. In play， children make their own decisions and solve their own problems. In adult-directed settings， children are weak and vulnerable. In play， they are strong and powerful. The play world is the child’s practice world for being an adult. We think of play as childish， but to the child， play is the experience of being like an adult： being self-controlled and responsible.

In recent decades we as a society have been conducting a play-11）deprivation experiment with our children. Play deprivation is bad for children. Among other things， it promotes anxiety， depression， suicide， 12）narcissism， and the loss of creativity. It’s time to end the experiment.

上世紀50年代，在我兒時，我和伙伴們同時接受兩種教育。我們去學校上學，也接受一種我稱之為“采獵式”的教育。幾乎每天放學后，我們都與附近由不同年齡的孩子組成的群體一起玩耍，而且常常玩到天黑。所有的周末，所有的夏天，我們都在玩耍中度過。我們有時間去嘗試各種各樣的玩法，也有時間玩到膩歪，然后想辦法打破沉悶，有時間碰上麻煩，然后想法子擺脫困境，有時間做白日夢，有時間專注到自己的興趣當中，有時間看漫畫，以及其它任何我們想看而不是硬塞給我們的書。與在學校里所受到的教育相比，我在采獵式教育中所學到的一切對我的成年生活來說更有價值。

五十多年以來，在美國，孩子們玩耍的機會被漸漸蠶食，這種情況在其他國家也是如此?；羧A德·丘達科夫在他的《游戲中的孩子：一段美國歷史》（2007）一書中指出，二十世紀上半頁是孩子們自由玩耍的“黃金時期”。大約到了1900年，童工的需求減少，于是孩子們有了大量的自由時間。但是，約從1960年甚至更早一些時間開始，成年人開始逐步剝奪孩子們的自由，讓他們花更多的時間在作業上。更有甚者，即便是他們放學了，不用做作業，父母也不讓他們自由玩耍。

在孩子們的玩耍時間減少的同時期，兒童期精神紊亂的情況卻增加了。有分析顯示，幾十年來年輕人身上的焦慮和沮喪程度呈持續線性增長。這種癥狀在今天會被診斷為廣泛性焦慮癥和重度抑郁癥，其人數比例是上世紀50年代時的五到八倍。……