Play, Dreams and Imitation in Childhood by Piaget Jean Jean;

Author:Piaget, Jean, Jean; [Jean Piaget]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781136318184
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

§ 2. The Theory of Pre-exercise

The importance of the ideas which as long ago as 1896 K. Groos opposed to the accepted views on play cannot be exaggerated. In spite of the prophetic visions of the great educationists, play has always been considered, in traditional education, as a kind of mental waste-matter, or at least as a pseudo-activity, without functional significance, and even harmful to children, keeping them from their homework. For its part, common-sense, imbued with the adulto-centrism which has been the great obstacle in genetic research, saw in play only a relaxation, or a drain for superfluous energy, without enquiring why children play in one way rather than in another. Groos’s great merit is to have understood that a phenomenon which is so general, common to the higher animals and man, cannot be explained outside the laws of psycho-physiological maturation. In other words, K. Groos saw in play a phenomenon of growth, growth of thought and of activity, and he was the first to ask why the various forms of play exist. Moreover, being an æsthetician as well as a psychologist, Groos was interested in play in relation to art, and it was the mechanism of imagination in particular that he sought to explain. K. Groos’s doctrine has therefore two quite distinct aspects: a general theory of play as pre-exercise, and a special theory of symbolic imagination. It is true that the originality of his theory lies precisely in his interpretation of “make-believe” as pre-exercise. This makes it all the more necessary to distinguish the two parts of his thesis, for although we have no difficulty in accepting the essentials of the first as far as practice games are concerned, the second seems to us unsatisfactory when we consider symbolic games.

Play, according to Groos, is “pre-exercise” and not merely exercise, because it contributes to the development of functions whose maturity is reached only at the end of childhood: general functions such as intelligence, etc., to which games of trial and error are related, and special functions or particular instincts. (The spring of activity is for Groos instinctive in character.) But instinct comes into play at its own time and requires preparation beforehand. The preparatory exercise necessary for its maturation, and which therefore must take place before maturation is achieved, is the specific occupation of childhood, and that is play. Groos had previously said in The Games of Animals “animals are young so that they may be able to play.” The pleasure which accompanies the stimulation of any instinctive tendency, and the joy inherent in any successful action, the well-known “joy of being the cause,” are the affective concomitants of this pre-exercise. From them consciousness of make-believe will be derived. “The joy of being the cause” involves consciousness of an aim. Far from being purposeless activity, play can only be conceived as the pursuit of specific ends. But the simplest aim is immanent in pre-exercise: the puppy which seizes another by the scruff of the neck is only stimulating

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