Readings (30 June 2014)

Why Free Play Is the Best Summer School, by Jessica Leahy, from The Atlantic. A “Well, duh” kind of article, speaking as a father, but one offering an idea of childhood not much accepted these days. A study by psychologists from the University of Colorado

found that children who engage in more free play have more highly developed self-directed executive function. The opposite was also true: The more time kids spent in structured activities, the worse their sense of self-directed control.

The author also quotes the Boston College psychologist Peter Gray, who noted that

Free play is nature’s means of teaching children that they are not helpless. In play, away from adults, children really do have control and can practice asserting it. In free play, children learn to make their own decisions, solve their own problems, create and abide by rules, and get along with others as equals rather than as obedient or rebellious subordinates.

Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (The Real Reason For The Forty-Hour Workweek), by David Cain, from Films for Action. Cain points out that we buy a lot of things we don’t need and that corporations encourage us to do so, and then writes:

The ultimate tool for corporations to sustain a culture of this sort is to develop the 40-hour workweek as the normal lifestyle. Under these working conditions people have to build a life in the evenings and on weekends. This arrangement makes us naturally more inclined to spend heavily on entertainment and conveniences because our free time is so scarce.

I’ve only been back at work for a few days, but already I’m noticing that the more wholesome activities are quickly dropping out of my life: walking, exercising, reading, meditating, and extra writing.

The one conspicuous similarity between these activities is that they cost little or no money, but they take time.