Parents Are Taking the Fun Out of Toys

From today's Wall Street Journal.

Anthony Esolen (10 Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child) would probably agree that parents are taking the really creative fun out of fun, making toys into another educational project. This is to be expected when having a child itself has been made into a self-fulfillment project. And perhaps that is to be expected from a society whose elites have turn procreation into just another project of the Selfish Gene. When you remove something that children acquire from their natural play, what do they lose, and what are you replacing it with? 

Comments

[J. A. Roelfsema]

Slightly off topic: I thought about educational games a bit after growing up during the time when "educational" computer games became popular. Many home-school friends I knew were allowed plenty of computer time so long as the games were "educational." The problem was that their "educational" quality, as designed by their creators, turned out to be inversely proportional to their quality as a fun game, although the creators would not admit this. I never got into them very much. On the other hand, computer games that were precisely designed first of all to be games and then only incidentally included other knowledge or required other skills, such as SimCity or Age of Empires or Civilization, helped me begin to think of things such as city planning or political alliances or keeping people supplied. They were still games, but they were games that opened my mind beyond simple entertainment. They were open ended games, by which I mean that one was not supposed to become educated by them but simply to enjoy them and explore them.

[Magister Christianus]

I could not agree more! Our son is now 10, and he had gotten more mileage out of a tree limb than you could imagine. I shaped the end into something of a spear point, painted the end gold, and stained the shaft. That spear has been thrown hundreds of times in our back yard, often as he and I have re-enacted the Trojan War. It has made several trips to the armory (i.e. garage), for repainting. It is just a stick! Yet has been of his favorite toys. We love playing outside with both of our children. Sometimes my wife or I will take a moment to teach something directly while playing, but I could not agree more that just plain ol' play is a vital necessity today.