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| The End of Playing |
Hola, this is a picture of me after completing 6th grade. I don't
know if you are aware that in Mexico, and in a large number of countries in the
world, the elementary school only goes from 1st grade to 6th grade. The
photograph is attached to my Elementary School Graduation certificate and I
titled it “The End of Playing". I named it like this because this
graduation literally signified the end of playing for me and the beginning of
an adult-like life.
Just like a couple
of our colleagues, I had a difficult (nevertheless enlightening) infancy. I was
born and grew up in Mexico City the most populated city in the world. I was raised
in an impoverished and though neighborhood. My mother die after
giving birth to her fifth child. I was 8 years old and the oldest of the
five siblings, two boys and three girls. My father fall gravely ill and
lost everything. We all ended up in orphanages and lived there for a couple of
years. After that, my distressed father pulled out of the orphanage my brother
and I and this event marked one of the most exhilarating times of my life. For
several years, my father, my brother and I lived in some of the
most dissonant environments. We lived on the streets, in hotels,
motels, rented houses, borrowed houses, with family, by ourselves, with poor
people, with rich people, in big cities, in orchards and farms, in small cities
and ranches, in more than a score of places. Here comes probably the strangest
statement you will ever hear from me. Remember that four sentences above I
wrote that my liberation from the orphanage marked one of the most
exhilarating times of my life? Well, it was! Despite of the fact that my
brother and I didn't have a stable house nor a functional family and we
changed schools and living arrangements constantly we learned to
play. Life became an adventure and a game for us. On all these diverse
environments we learned and play. We learned the value of money by buying and
selling things. We learned geography by traveling. We learned about animals,
plants and seasons by working on the fields. We learned about food by hunting,
fishing, gathering and cooking. We learned social skills by playing with
children from diverse socio-economic status. Playing soccer, baseball,
basketball, marbles, riding donkeys and old bicycles, swimming in the
rivers, creeks and lakes. By talking, sharing and playing we learned the value
of friendship and respect for all venues of life. Living and playing were our
greatest possessions. Those were exhilarating times. The end of elementary was
for me the end of my playful childhood and the beginning of a different stage
in my learning journey. It was a time in which I had to "mature" and take responsibility of
my family and my own life. At this moment it comes to my mind the assigned
video "Development and Culture" in which Lucia Alcala, a Doctoral
candidate, speaks about how children living in impoverished environments learn
by "having the opportunities to do real things" which is as powerful
as pretend play for learning and cognitive development. We must never
diminish the power of play because it is essential in the development of
fundamental skills in our children.
