Undervaluing The Value of Toys and Play in Children’s Education

Toys are much more important than many adults are willing to admit, and play a crucial part in a child’s healthy development.

These days, many consider playing a waste of time when compared to children’s need to have more theoretically cognitive activities in their daily lives. Much of this is due to the fact that our children’s generation is growing up in a world that is much more competitive and which provides more opportunity to those who are better prepared.

It is true that the world is increasingly more competitive but this does not mean that we should deprive children of one of the principal tools they need for their learning and development process: creativity, imagination, self-esteem. According to the French psychiatrist Edouard Seguin, “textbooks cannot teach children what toys develop in them. Nations that have more toys are also those that have more individuality, idealism, and heroism.” Then he goes on to affirm that “playing is the most spontaneous act of infancy and, moreover, for the child it is the free and voluntary realization of a physiological and psychological function; [playing] is sacred.”

The creators of one of the most modern pedagogies (Claparede and Decroly), and the only one that truly integrates play in teaching, describe playing as “the bridge that connects the child to the world outside the school walls.” Decroly invented a form of integrating playing with learning called “the educational toy”. Unfortunately, this term has been frequently downplayed by teachers who do not accept them as complements to education, and who believe that these toys will detract from the value of both the play and the education.

The educational toy is one that awakens the curiosity, the thirst for knowledge, the motivation to improve oneself, the yearning to share, or just a smile. It’s a different way for the child to be able to look at learning as a fun and satisfying activity, while at the same time working on his self-esteem, which is so important in the first years of life.

Beyond the demands of our time and our society, toys, which are present throughout the centuries, respond to essential inner human needs that will never change in time; they unravel constant psychological functions and will always be children’s favorite companions. Some times toys can be simple cardboard boxes or mom's pots and pans. Other times, they can be miniature representations of the real world (trains, cars, people, stores, kitchens, etc.) dollhouses, marionettes and puppets, dolls, action figures, animals, blocks, interactive games.