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John Dewey had high hopes for play. He devoted a chapter in Democracy and Education to "Play and Work in the Curriculum" and praised some of German kindergarten founder Friedrich Froebel's views as "perhaps the most effective single force in modern educational theory in effecting widespread acknowledgment of the idea of growth." Writing about the University of Chicago Laboratory School, Dewey said that it endeavored "throughout its whole course ... to carry into effect certain principles which Froebel was perhaps the first to consciously set forth." At the same time, Dewey criticized Froebel's scripted play activities for lacking opportunities for children to exercise free choice. Dewey did not advocate completely free play, however. He wanted children to experience a sense of free agency within a teacher-guided environment in which they learned the kind of voluntary self-control needed in a democratic society. Teacher-guided free play, Dewey argued, could reconcile individual agency and social discipline, one of the central dilemmas of liberal democracy.1
Although Dewey's ideas about play were influenced by Froebel and progressive kindergarten teachers, he called the classes for four- five- and six-year-olds at the University of Chicago Laboratory School the Sub-primary Department, not a kindergarten. Added to the school in 1898, the Sub-primary Department was one of the environments in which Dewey examined ways that teacher-guided free play promoted children's individual and social learning and democracy. He continued his observations in play-based progressive schools, where he argued that play and work were naturally linked, and elaborated on play in his writings.2
Exploring Dewey's notions of play, a notoriously difficult concept to define, reveals much about how he thought it functioned in helping to create a democratic society. Placing Democracy and Education in the context of Progressive Era controversies over play in kindergarten and preschool education illuminates aspects of how Dewey's ideas about play evolved. What were some of Dewey's hopes for play? What were Dewey's views on Friedrich Froebel's play-based pedagogy? How might progressive kindergarten educators, and teachers in the Sub-primary Department at the University of Chicago Laboratory School, have influenced how Dewey understood play? How did Dewey argue that teacher-guided free play could resolve the dilemma of free agency and social discipline? How did Dewey view the relationship between...