Games Children Play

Take any number of children from six to twelve years old. Give them some idle time. Add some empty space--a city block, a vacant lot, a backyard or a corner of a park--as remote as possible from grownups. What will the children do? Play games, of course. Not the structured contests organized by adults, but games of their own choice and heritage. And if an unobtrusive observer from the adult world keeps a sympathetic ear and eye open, he may recapture some of the fleeting spirit that is the essence of childhood.

This is just what Folklorists lona and Peter Opie have done in Children's Games in Street and Playground, published by the Oxford University Press. For 20 years the husband-and-wife team has been exploring and documenting the cultural patterns that characterize childhood. Their particular flair is an ability to see children's activities from the perspective of the young. Their new book is an expert guided tour of that arcane subsociety in which play is as vital as work is to the adult.

Different Needs. From the 10,000 schoolchildren who were their sources, the Opies collected the unwritten rules for 2,500 games that are now played in England, Scotland and Wales, and they traced their historic origins. Like many of the verses in the Opies' now-classic volumes on the origins of nursery rhymes (TIME, Dec. 5, 1955), many of today's games are centuries old. Blindman's buff, ducks and drakes, hide and seek, and tug-of-war were enjoyed by children in Plato's Greece. Ancient Egypt knew the finger-flashing game of paper-scissors-stone, still played around the world--and not only by youngsters. The universality and durability of children's games, the authors say, reveal the traditionalist in every child.

In the adult world, to win is everything, but children's games satisfy different requirements. The participants "seldom need an umpire," write the authors. "They rarely trouble to keep scores, little significance is attached to who wins or loses, they do not require the stimulus of prizes, it does not seem to worry them if the game is not finished. Indeed, children like games in which there is a sizable element of luck, so that individual abilities cannot be directly compared. They like games which restart almost automatically, so that everybody is given a new chance. They like games which move in stages, in which each stage, the choosing of leaders, the picking-up of sides, the determining of which side shall start, are almost games in themselves."

Would-Be Hero. Some games, as the Opies note, are little more than statements of vitality, "made bearable, very often, only by the pride that the young take in the practice of stoicism." This is certainly the case with "kingy," a game the authors rate as the leading unofficial sport of British schoolboys (see cut). It is "a ball game in which those who are not He ["It" in the U.S.] have the ball hurled at them, without means of retaliation, and against ever-increasing odds, an element that obviously appeals to the national character. Anyone who is hit by the ball immediately joins the He in trying to hit the rest of the players."

In a world full of hazards and natural enemies, games of daring entice the would-be hero. The authors exemplify this notion with "last across," "in which, to the consternation of motorists, children line up on a pavement, wait until the leader has selected a particular car or lorry, and then 'when it gets rather close you all run across the road and the one who gets nearest to the front bumper wins.' " Ask the Opies: "Is it just devilment that prompts the sport, or may it be some impulse of protest in the tribe?" The glory a boy sees in danger "is that it seems to be linked somehow with his becoming mature. If he did not do what was forbidden, how could he be sure he was a person with freedom of choice?"

Double Objective. The Opies have discovered two objectives in all unorganized play. One is social. "A game produces a structure within which a child is able to have relations with his own tribe," says Peter Opie. "It is an essential function through which a new arrival will find his place."

The other objective is individual: "Games give the child a chance of studying his position relative to the rest of the world without getting hurt by it. He can experience virtually all the incidents and emotions of life in play. He can throw stones or kiss, for instance, without risk."

Games are thus a preparation for life, but on the child's terms. The wise adult will not interfere. "In the long run," the Opies write, "nothing extinguishes self-organized play more effectively than does action to promote it. It is not only natural but beneficial that there should be a gulf between the generations in their choice of recreation." More than anything else, the Opies' book is an appeal to grownups everywhere to preserve that valuable gulf.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.