A history of children's play

Brian Sutton-Smith

When schools became more universal in the expanding industrial society between 1890 and 1920, a new emphasis on the control of children developed, and from 1920 onwards, adult supervision in the form of heavily organized sports and playgrounds encroached more and more upon the untamed freedom of the rural environment. The play of the children in the twentieth century has not always been voluntary, nor intrinsically motivated. From 1920 onwards such structural impositions as heavily supervise playgrounds, organized sports, organized mass leisure, and the panacea of television transformed and domesticated children's play. The author maintains that although children have become healthier, more verbally sophisticated, and more mechanically competent, they are much less physically and emotionally self-reliant. -- Book Jacket.

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