For centuries there have been battles and there have been wars. In our time, wars rage across the world: the Middle East, Crimea, Vietnam, just to mention a few. At home we have a war on poverty and a war on drugs. And then there's the war on children and their expressive culture. This war has been scaled into battles against one of the most important of activities, recess, where children’s culture forwards physical and behavioral development, where the child learns, through being a child, to be a member of society.
Anna R. Beresin wrote Recess Battles, exploring this lock-down on children’s expressive culture due in part to fears of playground violence. She now writes The Art of Play to examine what children who do have recess will do if offered, at no cost to the school, “traditional urban play materials: …jump ropes, balls, hoops, and chalk.” These were offered to nine “resource poor schools to enrich children’s time and support children’s expressive culture.” Students at four of the schools participated in an art activity “where teachers asked the children to paint what they do at recess and how it makes them feel.” Art about play became The Art of Play, focusing on 155 seven, eight, nine, and ten year olds from ethnic groups across Philadelphia: African American, Asian American, Latino, and white, with assistance from students at the University School of the Arts where Beresin is Associate Professor (1).
Beresin’s question is circular: “What can the art of play teach us about the art of play?” To answer the question, Beresin has organized the book into three parts: 1, Erasing Children’s Expressivity; 2, Master Players; and 3, Balancing Acts. Part One deals with the fact that so many schools have either suspended or eliminated recess for a sense of safety or have meted it out as gift or punishment for adult-perceived transgressions. In Part Two, master players are introduced through ruminations by fine artists on play in their professions as artists, dancers, and musicians. In Balancing Acts, the exploration becomes most technical as Beresin and her assistants perform statistical analysis on the children’s art work and on their physical activity, using pedometers to measure how many steps each child takes over a period of time; they also analyze activities, as well as commentary from the children, the teacher, and the researchers (3).
While the use of children’s art in exploring development is nothing new, the use of the pedometers is rather novel. While the pedometer can gauge such things as calories burned, Beresin chose to stick with the number of steps the students made in recess. When the children were introduced to the pedometers, most accepted them fully, even with a sense of competition, wanting to know if one child made more steps than another.
A novel approach was used to get around release forms, though Beresin was somewhat successful in negotiating with her university’s Internal Review Board. But permission was important, and it was not easily gained as most of the parents worked and were unavailable when it came time to give or refuse permission. In light of that, Beresin had students draw their faces to create an overlay face that would be attached to the child when creating the publication of The Art of Play. Of course it would have been great to see the facial expression as it corresponded to the play. But since it could not be done, this was going to have to suffice as a creative response to a difficult situation (20).
The Art of Play is slender in size but dense in content. Beresin claims it is a folklore book, but nowhere in the text does she define folklore. The interludes are interesting, but I wonder if they would have been more powerful had she selected Philadelphia folk artists, who speak regularly about the sense of humor and play in their respective arts. The points of view expressed by the artists Beresin has chosen seem to stand alone, their talk not connecting and interacting with the children’s activity.
In her analysis of the paintings, which she calls “paintlore,” Beresin points out that whereas the young children draw lone activity, the older children draw themselves playing with others. Some paint words into their art work, while others don’t. Beresin does not include the titles or comments on the art work (126).
Creativity and imagination are heavy hitters in this book. Play is a powerful force in children’s lives, and like an eternal flame, it won’t be snuffed out. But I wonder if Beresin might have stumbled in what she wanted to say, and her case might be over-complicated. She speaks of invention by way of the paintlore, but how long will particular inventions endure, since the children, if it hadn’t been for Beresin’s contributions of paint, brush, and paper, would not have had the opportunity to invent?
Despite some of its wrinkles, The Art of Play is a must read for those interested in children’s expressive culture and in how society might deal with the constant threat of children losing the playground as their theater of development through play. Beresin introduces us to the playful child who, through depictions, is also an artful child, a documentarian of his or her play activities, as a reflexive anthropologist might be. The study reveals a tenacious human, one who makes do with what he or she has in the name of play. Children are great communicators among themselves, and they have great strategies for doing so, first outlined by Brian Sutton-Smith in the 1970s and still with us today.
Beresin’s project is over for now, but we must keep a keen eye on the playground situation. As advocate, Beresin explores play action and artful representation with the hope that children, the ultimate victims of playground battles and culture wars, will retain these spaces for creativity, and that we will find ways of making their play accessible and meaningful.
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[Review length: 992 words • Review posted on May 7, 2014]