From an evolutionary perspective, play is nature's way of ensuring that young mammals will practice the skills they need for survival. Young carnivores, such as lions and tigers, play at stalking, chasing, and pouncing. Young zebras and other animals that are preyed on by lions and such play at running, dodging, and escaping. Young monkeys play endlessly at chasing one another and swinging from trees. Young humans--who have far more to learn than do the young of any other species--play in far more ways than do the young of any other species. The varieties of human play match well with the skills that humans everywhere must develop to survive and thrive.

We adults flatter ourselves when we think that we are the best models, guides, and teachers for children. Children are much more interested in other children than in us. Children are especially interested in, and ready to learn from, those others who are a little older than themselves, a little farther along in their development, but not too far along. . . . That is why age mixing is crucial to children's self-education.

Age-mixed play is more playful than is same-age play. When children who are all nearly the same age play a game, competitiveness can interfere with playfulness. This is especially true in our current culture, which puts so much emphasis on winning . . . In contrast, when children who differ widely in age play together, the focus shifts from that of beating the other to that of having fun. They play the game more joyfully, in a more relaxed manner, modifying the rules in ways to make it both fun and challenging for all involved. A playful mood facilitates creativity, experimentation, and the learning of new skills . . .

One of the oddest, and in my view most harmful, aspects our treatment of children today is our penchant for segregating them into separate groups by age. We do that not only in schools, but increasingly in out-of-school settings as well. In doing so, we deprive children of a valuable component of their natural means of self-education--the opportunity to play with and learn from those who are considerably older or younger than themselves.

Young people's instincts to play and explore, and thereby to learn, evolved in the context of the hunter-gatherer band. Here I describe the ingredients of the typical hunter-gatherer band that seem most crucial to self-education and show how those ingredients also exist at a modern school designed to enable self-education.

Many people today recognize the educative value of free play and exploration, regret that children are provided relatively little opportunity for such activities, and believe that children's willfulness is a positive force for their development, education, and enjoyment of life. Yet schools continue on, as before. In fact, conventional schooling and other adult-led activities modeled after such schooling occupy an ever-growing percentage of our children's time. Why is it so difficult to reverse this trend? . . . I don't pretend to know the full answer to this question, but here is an outline of my thoughts . . . .

If we want to understand why standard schools are what they are, we have to abandon the idea that they are products of logical necessity or scientific insight. They are, instead, products of history. Schooling, as it exists today, only makes sense if we view it from a historical perspective.

The Sudbury Valley School has, for the past forty years, been the best-kept secret in American education. ... Professors of education ignore it, not out of malice but because they cannot absorb it into their framework of educational thought. . . . To understand the school one has to begin with a completely different mindset from that which dominates current educational thinking.

Our human instincts, including all of the instinctive means by which we learn, came about in the context of a hunting-and-gathering way of life. And so it is natural that in this series on children's instinctive ways of educating themselves I should ask: How do hunter-gatherer children learn what they need to know to become effective adults within their culture?

Have you ever stopped to think about how much children learn in their first few years of life, before they start school, before anyone tries in any systematic way to teach them anything? Next time you are in viewing range of a child under the age of about five years old, sit back and watch for awhile. You're in for a treat.