Playing and learning

I am accepting this Honorary Fellowship, which Goldsmiths has conferred on me, with gratitude and humility. Gratitude to Goldsmiths where I completed my Master’s degree a long time ago. I was lucky to be supervised by giants in the field of nursery and infant education.

I am accepting this on behalf of early years teachers who teach in the Foundation Stage and Year 1 and who care passionately about the education and care of children aged from birth to seven.

Congratulations to you all for gaining your degrees and joining this great and most important of professions.

I had real difficulty deciding what to say to newly graduated teachers, and to post-graduates, whether to be light-hearted or earnest. Would I be really serious, sharing with you the awful challenges you face from a general public and politicians who fail to respect teachers, especially in the early years? The thought that the most formative time in children’s learning can be left to minimally trained opinion and intuition is horrifying – but is happening.

Would I rail against the marketisation of education? Or condemn politicians who since 2010 have cut spending and closed hundreds of Children’s Centres? Would I give chapter and verse about how education is not being funded properly?

Would I protest about curricula, which are increasingly centrally dictated, narrow and meaningless to a whole raft of young children?

Would I suggest that schools should be places of refuge and support from the challenges that children face in their worlds instead of places where the pressure put on schools and teachers to meet often-unrealistic targets adds significantly to children’s problems?

Would I say how we must be getting it wrong since we are seeing now children’s diminishing sense of well-being, growing mental health and obesity issues and an explosion of exclusions? Would I emphasise the unreasonable workload?

And I thought, no! This is not the time to give a rundown on the ills in education or berate the intransigence of a Government who won’t listen to evidence.

Good intentions

This is a time for celebration.

It is a time to look at one of the most important qualities a teacher needs to hold on to alongside their knowledge of child development and alongside the evidenced ways in which children learn best. It is a time to recognise and celebrate that most creative of qualities: a sense of humour. It sees us through.

We are working and learning together with the most creative people on earth: children.

We either work with them or we squash their creativity.

A sense of humour doesn’t mean laughing at children but rather recognising and enjoying their development.

Froebel said, ‘Every bad deed has a good intention!’

Find the good intention through a sense of humour, and extend what the children are learning through their play instead of following our agenda. The outcome will be better as the children’s learning and our outcomes will be met. No need for smiley-face stickers or star charts.

Much better to observe what their focus is, foster it and go with the flow.

The youngest children are wonderfully creative in what they do and in how they make sense of the world. A teacher last week told me of a conversation she overheard between two three-year-olds discussing their dreams. ‘What are dreams?’ asked one child. ‘Well, they are like a television in your head and you switch it on when you close your eyes!’

That conversation only takes place when children are given the space and time to wallow in ideas. Children’s minds expand with the space they are given. Constant teacher-directed tasks robs children of the space and time to think and play with ideas.

The experiences we offer children and their own home life and first-hand experiences feed children’s play. Play, imagination and creativity are the way we all make sense of the world – as adults we also make sense of our first-hand experiences and play with ideas through talking, reading, writing and dramatising our world; we listen, tell jokes and write poems; we make music, sing songs and think scientifically, testing out theories.

Children do all that in their play. Why do we have to justify play in our educational settings when it is the most efficient way for children to learn? Play gives meaning to literacy, science and maths and the whole curriculum. Maybe it is too dangerous to have children actually working things out for themselves!

We are required to assess children, but all the time they are assessing us. I remember telling my class a story and experienced that wonderful feeling of having them in thrall. A hand shot up. ‘Oh,’ I thought, ‘here will be some insight into the story.’ ‘Yes, what do you want to say?’ ‘Miss, you’ve got a ladder in your tights!’ Children take in the whole situation, not just what you think you are teaching.

They are watching to see, what we laugh at, how kind we are to each other, how sensitive we are to their emotions. They are assessing how much we understand them but also how much we value and support each other as a staff team.

Children notice and absorb everything that is meaningful.

We are up against many stresses that may tempt us to abandon good practice from time to time – having to meet often-unreasonable targets, or the pressure of an imminent Ofsted inspection.

Be on your guard against developmentally inappropriate practices.

Nurture your sense of humour, keep fighting and campaigning. Be the champions of children and families who don’t have a voice. You are their voice.

• This is an extract from Marjorie’s acceptance speech at the graduation ceremony on 16 January.