Free Play Under Fire

No more free play!

That's the order at Bourke Street Public School in New South Wales, Australia. The reason? When kids were organizing their own games of soccer and basketball, the games were "not inclusive, fair or fun for everyone."

So reports Seven News in Sydney. Now, instead of spontaneous ball games, says reporter Taylor Aiken, the basketball court will "be used for skipping." The soccer field will be devoted to gymnastics. And kids will be placed on a roster for the different activities prepared for them.

But why stop there? It sounds like the kids were too engaged, proactive and self-organizing. They could use some instruction in passivity! Perhaps they could be buckled into chairs and watch videos of children playing? Surely that's safe and fair. Or maybe they could create online avatars to play games for them, virtually. Heck — kill two birds with one stone and simply have them write personal essays about how fun a game would be, were they allowed to play it. That way they're learning grammar, spelling and story structure! The hours will fly by ... along with their childhood.

Peter Gray is a psychology professor at Boston College, cofounder with me of Let Grow, and author of the book "Free to Learn." He has spent his career trying to convince educators that the traits they love most in their students — curiosity, creativity, problem solving — are born when kids are playing.

"In play, kids are learning to be in control of their own lives," says Gray. "Unsupervised play is play that is controlled by the players themselves — the children. You learn all kinds of things in play, but the primary thing is to solve your own problems."

Before this new school policy, the kids on the playground had to figure out: What should we do? How should we do it? Who makes the rules, the teams, the calls? How can I hold it together until it's my turn?

Those may seem like playground problems, but they echo throughout life — and school. When kids doing worksheets get stuck on a problem, they have to work it out. That's LITERALLY problem solving. And if they're ever bored or confused? They have to cope with frustration. Most of all, they have to focus.

Play teaches that like nobody's business! If a child is playing at being, say, a dog — "I MUST run on all fours, I CANNOT talk, I can only bark" — it's a lot easier for her to transfer that kind of focus to a math problem. She's already a focus genius!

The New South Wales Department of Education released a statement saying "there is no ban on ball games at Bourke Street Public School." It's just trying to deal with a small play space and ensure "every student has equitable access." But clearly the kids had figured out how to play the ball games in that exact space and are now part of some adult-run dystopia disguised as time-and-space management.

Sure, those student-run games might have been messy. That's what play is. But the kids were working in a group, creating something out of nothing, and taking control of their lives — with only one small snag.

That's not allowed. For their own good.