You can't say you can't play

I have just finished reading Vivian Gussin Paley's book "You Can't Say You Can't Play". Although it was a fairly easy read, I struggled in the beginning to get the point. Throughout the entire first half of the book Paley seems to be agonizing over whether or not to implement a new rule: You can't say you can't play. She brings it up to her class and they discuss it often. She also goes into the 1st-5th grade classes to see how those children react to the rule. Many are opposed to it, but Paley is tired of seeing the same students, over and over, never let into games or play with others. As I said before, I didn't really understand the point of it at first. Why was Paley dragging out these conversations with her students? Why was she putting all this energy into interviewing others? Why not just make the new rule and see if it worked?

As we sat in class on Wednesday, discussing the first half of the book I began to realize why Paley hadn't just told her students that they could no longer say you can't play. By turning it into a question that the whole class explored, the students started to see how hurtful simply excluding someone could be. All the children knew what it felt like to be left out and as stories from each of them came out, Paley started drawing more students to her new rule. The class had to go through this process and examine all of the consequences, good and bad, to this new rule before it could ever be put into place. Once they understood why the rule was in place, they would be more likely to follow it.

Others in our class mentioned that they currently have this rule or a similar rule and that it doesn't work in their schools. I think the difference between Paley's class and these other classes though, is the process by which the rule came into existence. Nobody probably bothered to explain or discuss the reasons for this rule with the students at these other schools. Furthermore, there isn't really any way to enforce this rule, and students know this. Paley never offered up any consequences for not following the new rule either and yet the children continued to follow it. Again, I think because the whole class was involved in the process of examining the rule, they understood why it was in place and that it was in their best interest to follow it. They weren't forced to, they wanted to. What a clever way to get your students to start caring and thinking about how their actions affect others!