A few playground thoughts...

From the NYT piece below there are links to several related Times articles (Can Johnny come out and (be taught to) Play? and New York tries to think outside the Sandbox) . I'd like to record a few of the more interesting quotes here...

“Very little time is spent by kids in playgrounds if they have a choice,” said Roger Hart, who has been consulting with the Rockwell Group and the city in developing the playground. He is also a director of the Children’s Environments Research Group at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. “They limit the repertoire of play to children’s physical activity,” instead of encouraging the kind of social, sensory, interactive and individual fantasy play that children need, Mr. Hart said."

"Cultural critics have warned of the dangers of replacing spontaneous play with organized activities since the 1930s, when the historian Johan Huizinga published his classic, “Homo Ludens,” about the importance of spontaneous and unstructured play to the health of societies. "