Play plays a significant role in human life and has played a critical role in human life as far back as recorded human history can stretch and presumably played a pivotal role in the evolution of humans from their primate ancestors. We have been influenced by a milestone work on the play written by the Dutch historian, Johan Huizinga in the late 1930s and published in English in 1944, the book by name Homo Ludens. To Huizinga, a historian and cultural theorist, the play has played a significant role in the evolution of culture and society.
Since its publications, the role and importance of play, especially in the context of growth and development of children have been widely studied and written about.
Some of the books relevant to children that I have been influenced by are the following
1) The set of books written by John Holt in the sixties, including How Children Fail, Learning All the TIme
2) The books and writings of Peter Gray, including the book, Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life.
3) The book Toto Chan: The Little Girl at the Window, by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi
4) The book Teacher by Sylvia Ashton-Warner
There is a huge body of scholarly, medical, and empirical work that has been done and being done on the role of play in learning and development. These include scholarly writings (https://www.journalofplay.org/), the American Journal on Play,
Roskos K, Christie J. Examining the play–literacy interface: a critical review and future directions. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 2001;1(1):59–89.
Saracho ON, Spodek B. Young children’s literacy-related play. Early Child Development and Care 2006;176(7):707-721))
and books and articles for the general audience, for example, the book by Peter Gray above and another by
Pasi Sahlberg and William Doyle, Let the Children Play: How More Play Will Save Our Schools and Help Children Thrive.
The National Education Policy, 2020, emphasizes play-based learning for early childhood education as well as points out to this being the foundation on which the next stage of schooling needs to be built.
A few key quotes from the NEP 2020 final document:
"ECCE ideally consists of flexible, multi-faceted, multi-level, play-based, activity-based, and inquiry-based learning, comprising of alphabets, languages, numbers, counting, colors, shapes, indoor and outdoor play, puzzles and logical thinking, problem-solving, drawing, painting, and other visual art, craft, drama and puppetry, music and movement"
"The learning in the Preparatory Class shall be based primarily on play-based learning with a focus on developing cognitive, affective, and psychomotor abilities and early literacy and numeracy"
Thus, to ensure that all students are school-ready, an interim 3-month play-based ‘school preparation module’ for all Grade 1 student, consisting of activities and workbooks around the learning of alphabets, sounds, words, colors, shapes, and numbers, and involving collaborations with peers and parents, will be developed by NCERT and SCERTs.
"The Preparatory Stage will comprise three years of education building on the play, discovery, and activity-based pedagogical and curricular style of the Foundational Stage"
The NEP is a welcome policy change that in the long run will rescue generations of children from the current toil and slavery of rote-based learning. However, in the short term mainstream school system will have many challenges in absorbing the spirit of these recommendations and translating them into practice. It is here that special schools, like the schools for the blind, have a small silver lining: the current practice in most of these schools for the blind, even under the severe resource constraints is already attuned to play-based and activity-based learning, simply because most of the early learning is a guide through tactile means that require the teacher to literally handhold each child and not stand near aboard and talk over the children's heads as is done in most mainstream schools. And due to the resource constraints in such schools many times the children, in mixed-age groups, engage in play. the learning is also in mixed age groups with peer learning built into the system, again not because of any enlightened approach to teaching, but merely due to the paucity of teachers in most such schools. Another facet of schools for the blind is that many teachers are also blind and hence their empathy for children who are blind is much more than what even an enlightened sighted teacher can bring in.
Thus we have the stage set for introducing a play-centered approach to learning in schools for the blind to start with, and paradoxically, the learnings from such efforts have the potential to open the eyes of educators in mainstream schools. And hence we are excited to apply the methodology of Ludic design for accessibility to address the challenges of early childhood education for children who are blind.