Perspectives; Vivian Paley

This is perspectives I'm Laura Curan and when Vivian Paley won a genius grant from the MacArthur Foundation in 1989 it put the seal of approval on the work she had devoted her life to. Vivian Paley is a retired kindergarten teacher from Chicago. She saw her classroom as a laboratory where children learn their first lessons about morality and democracy in a way. Vivian Bailey spent her career studying kindergarten which she just cried as the official start of public life. Her research technique was to capture children's stories on a simple cheap recorder through years and years of dialogue. She just ciphered how children think and feel. Vivian Bailey was a Dartmouth College recently and we spoke with her about the 37 years she spent teaching kindergarten personnel. This is New Hampshire Public Radio. I'm Laura Karen and with perspectives my guest today Vivian Paley taught kindergarten for 37 years before her retirement in 1905. She's been more than two decades at the University of

Chicago Lab School in Hyde Park Illinois. Paley wanted genius grant from the MacArthur Foundation in 1909. She says that award put a much needed imprimatur on the study of early childhood education approval academics have been reluctant to give Vivian Bailey was a Dartmouth College recently. And I spoke with her about her work. She said she was teaching preschool when she first began to realize that these kids were on the verge of experiment ing with how they could fit into a society. One interaction began to emerge when kids played together they rejected some people. Paley began to think about a rule called you can't say you can't play. But she said she realized these preschoolers weren't quite ready to grasp that. I sensed that the 3 and 4 year old child was somewhat on the young side. To see the point of view of other children I tested this out. I found out

interestingly enough. That although four year olds would say yes I. I don't want anyone to tell me I can't play. And then in the next breath say but I want to be able to tell someone else they can't play. Now there was no sense of contradiction. I resumed my career back in kindergarten. And discovered that the very same kind of situation in play though the child still might want to only play with a best friend was none the less understood. Suddenly the transition from being a three going on four going on five year old to a five going on six year old meant that a new

phase of understanding how another child felt opened up. So Picture the scene a child in kindergarten says. She lookin to play. We're only playing two sisters now. We don't need a third sister. Sheila says I want to play. I want to be the third sister. No fair. Right at that point you can actually in kindergarten have a discussion about the fairness of a position that makes an arbitrary rule saying only two sisters allowed. It seems absurdly simple and yet it has everything to do with the sudden understanding of issues that are being debated every day in the Supreme Court.

This operate this ability to see the whole picture whether in play work. In sharing the outside world we can trace to the beginning of the kind of thinking that goes on in the kindergarten year. But what happens to Sheila in your classroom does she get to play or does it simply in my classroom Yes it is a very tricky situation. More and more people in fact have invited me because of a book I wrote by the same name you can't say you can't play. Which really describes this year long experiment in seeing what is a kindergarten class capable of reversing what is considered a human instinct to reject.

And instead moving to that other side by side human instinct which is to say come come play with me. Can a rule work. If there is plenty of time for debate for dialogue for analysis for discussion. What happens in my classroom and in hundreds of classrooms all over the country probably including some in the state of New Hampshire because I was invited to campus as a matter of fact to discuss this book which is being studied in one of the college educational philosophy classes. In the classroom I used to have. I would attempt to explain. I would attempt to persuade and then I would say Well Sheila let me find you someone else to play with you. And this is what is sort of the accepted routine.

You know I guess the hope is that these kids would carry this lesson else out of kindergarten because I think any parent would say that this is a familiar refrain that they for from their own children way beyond kindergarten into junior high school. That feeling of exclusion or being told that you know you can't join a street hockey game or you know we don't we don't want you to be in the yard with us right now. These are the worst insults levied against us and our children and our grandchildren that anyone can recall this really hurts. Furthermore this is really unnecessary. It points to the opportunity in. Kindergarten I keep getting back to kindergarten now because this is our particular subject right now. What is it that happens in kindergarten. That makes it the right time for it to happen rather than a year

earlier or as some might say a year later. The kindergarten age child is ready to see how society works before others impose. This is how society works. In the case that we're discussing right now these are the people who are the bosses. These are the people whom we don't play with in kindergarden this and almost all other aspects of life are open for analysis and discussion by children with one foot in fantasy one foot in reality who are eager to find out and indeed to be told. These are the nice things to do. These are the things that make people happy. These are the fair things to do. Strangely

enough my first in second grade. Children have already made up their minds. It was wonderful taking my tape recorder around that year of the experiment from first through fifth grade. Asking is the rule fair. Telling everyone we in the kindergarden want to initiate a new rule. The rest of the school was astonished by it. You can't say you can't play governing every aspect of school life. Is it fair or will it work. Well there was no question. By the way all the way through high school people question of course it's fair. Of course that's the way life ought to be. Will it work. No chance. People are not that nice and then they would stop and say oh but if you begin in kindergarten well maybe then because I remember I remember in kindergarten how much it hurt

when I was told I couldn't play. I remember that in kindergarten I listened to the teacher. It was such a common refrain. Miss Bailey did this happen to you when you were a kid. Were there moments when you felt excluded. I remember when I was a child. Interestingly enough. The other children who were excluded. My older brother was borderline retarded. I grew up with the painful shame of seeing the cruel treatment levied against my brother. It made me I think. Perhaps more sensitive than some jew ziss sort of behavioral that I began to see practiced from the earliest time not only by children

but by teachers too. I mean let us not fool ourselves. The modeling of the way of accepting people as full time members of our society. Is there in adult society. But the odd thing is the children actually I think are more fair when they are young than we are. We adults do use the common currency. They really do feel someone else's pain. They really do understand the tears of another child by kindergarten however they can understand what one does about it. And I've I fully believe that the kindergarten opportunity

with out the heavy overload of the beginning of formal education where one begins to be judged on the basis of how well are you reading how well are you doing math. Believe me I don't admire our way of judging people but that is what many of our children face. Nonetheless in kindergarten at least when children are old enough or young enough to still understand that play is the tool for learning. It is in play that we will learn everything about ourselves and others. But they're old enough to wonder stand how to negotiate with a fair rule. And enables someone else to have a fair chance. At the kind of play that they enjoy.

You're listening to perspectives on New Hampshire Public Radio My guest is Vivian Paley. She spent more than 30 years teaching kindergarten She's authored several books on early childhood. MISS BAILEY I know that you know that New Hampshire is the only state in the nation that does not make kindergarten available in the public school system to all of its students. I think now about. 20 percent of the kids or so still don't have it available in the public schools. What happens to kids who don't get the opportunity to go to kindergarten. Some children. Of course there are still some children very few. Who have a full family life with lots of little siblings and mom is at home or grandma and children outside playing. But you and I know that this idyllic picture which was still there when my sons were little and they're in their 40s now.

Is hardly available anywhere. What do children lose. Not only do children lose but a school that does not begin at kindergarten. I believe. Loses all 0. The important sense of play and social interaction social connection. As the be all and end all of the rest of our lives of learning. The child who begins in kindergarten and the school whose curriculum begins in kindergarten are in the same fortunate position. They and everyone else can see and refer back to all ways. The initial understandings of how the mind creates

narrative story that is to explain all the things we need to know how we as learners are social learners. Why can't kids learn this in the first grade. Why does it have to be a separate experience in kindergarten. I can play devil's advocate a little bit here. You know if a town says look we'd love to do this and we've heard this often here in New Hampshire. We love to do this. We don't have the money. We'll try to do it in the first grade. I'm going to answer this in two ways first. Kind of factual real Was I have not seen a first grade in a long long number of years. That begins with the premise of play. Now first grade first graders in most public school systems. Spend most of their

day in academic pursuits so that. We don't even need to discuss why it is not done. Furthermore the trend pulls even further away from doing it. Many of the first grade classrooms I walk into. Look like second grade classrooms. By the way I'll have to say that some of the kindergarten classrooms I walk into look like first grade classroom what does that mean. What does that mean. It means that they begin an academic study. They begin laying it on the line with reading writing and arithmetic at an age that is premature in the child's development. That at an age when children are experimenting in play with trial and error this works. This

doesn't work. Let me try this this in this let me see how it plays itself out. Notice that we almost can't keep from saying things like how it plays itself out. Academics know Belus say in their labs. Let's see how this plays itself out. The kindergarten year is the year. I would make it a full day is the year where things play themselves out. Now let me answer in another way. The kindergarten year literally is a different chronological year. You see the whole argument for saying let's do all these kindergarten things when a child is in first grade falls apart when we realize that it's not like saying I'll do it at age 40. One what I thought I might do at

40 there's very little difference between forty and forty one or perhaps with tween 40 and 45 or I'm in my 60s I can tell you between 60 and 65. But there is an enormous world of difference between the 5 to 6 year old and the 6 to 7 year old. The 5 to 6 year old really learns almost entirely through play. Say the transition a year is a transition based upon that developing consciousness. The transition going from fantasy. To that other part of the world. That is what other people say it is. You can't safely skip over that piece of your development.

I think my guest is veteran kindergarten teacher Vivian Paley. MISS BAILEY I want to ask you about your MacArthur Foundation grant which you received in 1909 is called the genius grant although I know that people don't they don't call it that but I think that most of us recognize the importance of it was three hundred fifty five thousand dollars. What did you do with your grant. What was your life like for that period of time was it was a for two years. The grant is given. Out by the way is interestingly enough the older you are when you receive it the more you get is strictly a question of your age which which is kind of interesting. It's given out to the recipient over a period of five years. I continued as I had. For the previous 10 years. Doing the things that got me the grant writing books I had just finished

a book called The Boy Who Would Be A helicopter and continued teaching till my normal time that I would retire and wrote three more books. Following that you can't you can't say you can't play koans and me and the book dealing with my final year of kindergarten teaching which will be out in March. The girl with the brown crayon. My life really. My professional life changed. Not at all. I kept teaching and I kept writing books about what I was teaching. You know one of the things you have said those that you think that the grant put an imprimatur on your work in the in the study of early childhood education that it otherwise almost didn't have that sort of gave you you know that credential and not to say that you needed it but rather that it was sort of a public credential that this was worthy of attention.

You're absolutely right. I think it gave preschool and kindergarten early childhood educators all over a good feeling. One of us still remaining in the classroom still concentrating entirely on what is to be learned about life from studying the young child. I got an award that is usually given to Ph.D. doing much more. Important quote work well and wondering on that point. Your colleagues react to that because it has been written that well you know within your profession people into phrase was didn't know what to do with you because clearly they viewed you as somebody important but you hadn't done the the so-called you know clinical data collection that pure researchers do in your manner of going around your tape recorder in your classroom may not have

been as scientific as some researchers would have liked. How do you react to that. I would say that you're absolutely correct in this sense and that all the also I have to say that it kind of amuses me. The academic community by which I mean the. University fellowship of scholars has I think. Not ever had a niche in which to put me and still don't. And so be it. They don't mind and I don't mind. I am considered to offer original source material or original research. The fact is that like the kindergarten teacher that I like the kindergarten children that I study. I seem to be a sort of transitional thinker. Between the. Classroom

teacher and the academic professional. I'm neither here nor there. What am I doing. I'm studying. Little children I'm giving a view of the classroom. Almost you might say through the eyes of the children. And by the way I can't help but put this in because I do think it makes a point. If I. Studying almost entirely the world of kindergarten children managed to draw out enough interesting material to fill nine books. Imagine what the kindergarten them chill kindergarten children themselves during that period. I have studied learn from each other. Now I know this may seem that's a peculiar thing for her to say and yet I can't help but feel

that since I am studying the children and getting all of this material. From their play and interactions in almost every topic I can think of so are they. I'm not putting down anything they themselves are not also learning. I don't know if anyone else appreciates the irony of that but I do. We're talking about early childhood education with Vivian Paley the school where you spend the last 24 years teaching kindergarten is the University of Chicago Laboratory School right in Hyde Park Chicago which is a university area. It costs $7000 a year for a child to attend that kindergarten is that right. I'm told that that is what the tuition is now for a full day kindergarten. Shocking isn't it what is shocking and here's my question. Do you think you would have had the same experience in an inner city public

school. I'm asked that question so often and it's such a good question and I ask myself that question as I go around have gone around visiting inner city classrooms demonstrating for the teachers storytelling story acting how to have a discussion with children all that sort of thing. I am convinced that I would have written perhaps different kinds of books because certainly I would have been part of a different culture. I would have learned things that I have been deprived of learning by not being in a different culture. Would I have not discovered the inner world of children no matter where I taught. I think that if

I would have the same opportunity to immerse the children and me in play and storytelling and constant verbalizing about what we are who we are what we're doing pretend this pretend that I think I would have discovered the very same things I have discovered. Vivian Paley is a retired kindergarten teacher in 1989 she was awarded what's become known as a genius grant by the MacArthur Foundation. Respect is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio shows produced by David Darman and Laura Curan. Thanks for listening.