Child's Play

10 Pages 2464 Words

A child’s play is an integral part of the child growing up. This play can be done anywhere, as a child is able to conjure up situations where play is possible from just about anything. However for the purposes of this essay I will talk of the playground area at two different schools. How children manage play is what I will be looking at. The question of how much a role gender plays in differing age groups. How do children react to an older male and female ‘invading’ their territory and are there any marked differences in play between boys and girls? Younger and older students?

The first school I visited was Khandallah School. A primary school of approximately 480 students aged from 5 through to 11. The school is split into two different areas. One for the younger children (aged 5 to 7) and another for the older children (8 to 11). This here is forced segregation and limited my ability to judge how a child reacts to those at the opposite end of the age spectrum. An ideal situation would have been to have one single playground where all age groups played. Thus evidence of age acceptance or rejection would have been more obvious. I walked into the younger playground to observe them first. As I walked through the playground to a spot where I could sit unobtrusively and observe, I felt like Geertz did when he first moved to Bali, as though the students “seemed to look through us with a gaze focused several yards behind us on some more actual stone or tree” (Geertz, 1973, pp 193). This feeling of ‘non-existence’ was to pursue me for the duration of my time at this school, as I was an invisible man to the children. A mere obstacle in their way as they trod their own path of play.

The nearest group of children to me were a group of 7 females with 1 male, sitting around in a circle, partaking in what looked like colouring in of sorts. I noted this as stereotypical behavioural characteristics eg what society believes little...