[Xmca-l] Re: Fwd: P.S. Re: R.I.P. VIVIAN PALEY -- What a rich life(-story) . . . that so enriched ours 

[Robert Lake]

Thank-you for these two articles and the NY Times Obit.
Here is a review of one of her books along with a short interview by
Derrick Bell
from the Times archive.  September 6, 1992.

YOU CAN'T SAY YOU CAN'T PLAY

By Vivian Gussin Paley.134 pp. Cambridge, Mass.:Harvard University Press.
$15.95

VIVIAN GUSSIN PALEY'S book "You Can't Say You Can't Play" is arresting in
its title, magical in its appeal and inspiring in its message. It
resurrects the special delight of reading to children from books that
convey different meanings to them than they do to adults. Here, Mrs. Paley,
a teacher at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools and the author of
a number of books about teaching children (including "The Boy Who Would Be
a Helicopter"), captures and exploits this duality: her book is part
fiction, part real; it is aimed at adults but has as its characters the
children in her kindergarten class.

Mrs. Paley recognizes the deep hurt of young schoolchildren who are told by
their peers, "You can't play; don't sit by me; stop following us; I don't
want you for a partner; go away." So she suggests to her quite resistant
young charges that along with bans on hitting and name-calling, they should
shun play practices that divide the class into a ruling group and outsiders.

While most of the children concede that her suggested rule, "You can't say
you can't play," is very fair, they don't think it will work. It is, they
tell their teacher, just not human nature. And the strongest opponents of
the rule are those children who do most of the excluding. Stating the case
with more candor than tact, one little girl wails that if kids can't
exclude kids they don't like, "then what's the whole point of playing?"

Most teachers address peer rejection by trying to help the outsiders become
more acceptable to the insiders. Often this only worsens the children's
sense of exclusion. Mrs. Paley, who is in her 60's now, still remembers her
first-grade teacher, who said of an overweight girl in the class, "She'd
have friends if she lost weight and changed her dress once in a while."
Mrs. Paley's philosophy is both more humane and more ambitious: "The group must
change its attitudes and expectations toward those who, for whatever
reason, are not yet part of the system."

Social scientists studying the problem of rejection would probably do it in
a thick volume so heavy with statistics, footnotes, education jargon and
legal theory that most readers would risk terminal boredom. But Mrs. Paley
is a teacher, and she seems to have adopted an approach to her readers (and
to her students) that is described in the epitaph of the Rev. William
Burton, headmaster of an English grammar school in the 1920's, who "taught
as a learner . . . led as a follower [and so] . . . set the feet of many
upon the way of life."

With imaginative skill, the author introduces her children -- and her
readers -- to a fairy tale about a magpie endowed with human wisdom but
also beset with fears and foibles. Mrs. Paley intersperses Magpie's
adventures with her dialogues with her kindergartners. But the children,
though engrossed by each new episode of Magpie's story, are not easily won
over by the lessons.

Mrs. Paley seeks the counsel of older students in other classes. The fifth
graders think the idea of barring rejection in play is a good one, but only
in kindergarten because, as one girl puts it, "rules are big things then."
The fourth-grade class agrees that it would work for kindergartners but not
for themselves: "We're much meaner than in kindergarten." The kindergarten
kids "trust you," they tell her. "They'll do what you say. It's too late to
give us a new rule."

Even the second graders are doubtful about accepting a rule barring all
exclusion. They prefer that one child serve as a "boss" to settle disputes
about who plays with whom. In fact, they would rather obey a boss than vote
to settle disputes. "See," one girl explains for the group, "the bad thing
about voting is, if you don't vote for that person she'll see all the
people who don't like her. If it's a boss, that's only one person [who]
doesn't like you so you don't feel so bad." Equally pragmatic, one
fifth-grade boy tells Mrs. Paley: "In your whole life you're not going to
go through life never being excluded. So you may as well learn it now."

The general feeling, Mrs. Paley concludes, is that "friendship comes before
fairness, and the plan is seen as an intrusion into friendship." This is an
attitude all too familiar to those working for civil rights. When the
Supreme Court ordered the racial desegregation of public schools in 1954,
the critics of the decision contended that it interfered with the right of
whites to non-association with blacks. Though the Court rejected that
argument and a myriad of similar ones, it could do nothing about the toll
that coerced remedies would take on the intended beneficiaries.

Mrs. Paley's kids learn this harsh fact quite early. While admitting their
feelings are hurt when classmates won't play with them, they agree with one
child who warns: "Yeah, but it hurts more if the teacher forces people to
play with you." "He's right!" someone calls out. "Last year, one time some
guys wouldn't let me play and the teacher came up and told them they had to
. . . and, boy, was it ever uncomfortable standing there, listening to my
friends argue with the teacher about letting me play."

MRS. PALEY has the answer for her class. "Story is never enough, nor is
talk. We must be told, when we are young, what rules to live by. The
grown-ups must tell the children . . . so that myth and morality proclaim
the same message while the children are still listening." Sound advice,
certainly. And it seems to make a difference. Mrs. Paley concedes that "
'you can't say you can't play' is apparently not as natural a law as, for
example, 'I say you can't play.' " Still, she observes that by the end of
the year the children who obeyed the rule not only included more kids in
their play but also were more expansive in their storytelling.

But what are we to do with a nation -- a world really -- filled with people
who from an early age learn to exclude others and to expect exclusion
themselves? More to the point, how does one prepare the children who have
learned the inclusion lessons Mrs. Paley effectively teaches to live in an
exclusionary world? "You Can't Say You Can't Play" illustrates how the
teacher's art can attack the evil of exclusion at its childhood root. Now,
Mrs. Paley, we need your help in weeding out the pernicious practices that
afflict the adults of our exclusionary society.

A version of this review appears in print on September 6, 1992, on Page 76
of the National edition with the headline: A Kindergarten Cliquebuster. Today's
Paper <http://www.nytimes.com/pages/todayspaper/index.html>|Subscribe
<http://www.nytimes.com/subscriptions/Multiproduct/lp839RF.html?campaignId=48JQY>

On Mon, Aug 5, 2019 at 8:09 PM mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:

> I forgot about this set of Paley papers
> Mike
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ---------
> From: Frank Kessel <frankskessel@gmail.com>
> Date: Fri, Aug 2, 2019 at 7:36 PM
> Subject: P.S. Re: R.I.P. VIVIAN PALEY -- What a rich life(-story) . . .
> that so enriched ours 🙏
> To: Frank Kessel <kesfam@me.com>
>
>
> Of course there are almost endless things we can say, and stories to
> share, about Vivian.  Still, one or three of you (a) may remember this, or
> (b) find it worthwhile now . . .  where “it” would be at least her own
> discussion (and others’) on pp. 77 ff.
>
>
>
> On Aug 2, 2019, at 11:24 AM, Frank Kessel <kesfam@me.com> wrote:
>
> THE NEW YORK TIMESVivian Paley, Educator Who Promoted Storytelling, Dies
> at 90
> Image[image: Vivian Gussin Paley in 1988. She believed in the power of
> storytelling in developing the minds and social qualities of small
> children. She wrote 13 books and won a MacArthur award for her work.]
> Vivian Gussin Paley in 1988. She believed in the power of storytelling in
> developing the minds and social qualities of small children. She wrote 13
> books and won a MacArthur award for her work.CreditCreditSpecial
> Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.
> By Katharine Q. Seelye <https://www.nytimes.com/by/katharine-q-seelye>
>
>    - Aug. 1, 2019
>    -
>       -
>       <https://www.facebook.com/dialog/feed?app_id=9869919170&link=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2019%2F08%2F01%2Feducation%2Fvivian-paley-dead.html&smid=fb-share&name=Vivian%20Paley%2C%20Educator%20Who%20Promoted%20Storytelling%2C%20Dies%20at%2090&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2F>
>       -
>       <https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnyti.ms%2F2YyODRT&text=Vivian%20Paley%2C%20Educator%20Who%20Promoted%20Storytelling%2C%20Dies%20at%2090>
>       -
>       <?subject=NYTimes.com%3A%20Vivian%20Paley%2C%20Educator%20Who%20Promoted%20Storytelling%2C%20Dies%20at%2090&body=From%20The%20New%20York%20Times%3A%0A%0AVivian%20Paley%2C%20Educator%20Who%20Promoted%20Storytelling%2C%20Dies%20at%2090%0A%0AHer%20methods%20helped%20children%20%E2%80%9Cjoin%20a%20complex%20and%20diverse%20social%20world%2C%E2%80%9D%20a%20colleague%20said%2C%20but%20they%20met%20resistance%20from%20advocates%20of%20standardized%20testing.%0A%0Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2019%2F08%2F01%2Feducation%2Fvivian-paley-dead.html>
>       -
>       -
>
> Vivian Gussin Paley, a pioneering teacher and widely acclaimed author who
> emphasized the importance of storytelling in early childhood development,
> died on July 26 in Crozet, Va. She was 90.
> Her son, David Paley, said she had been in failing health for some months
> and died in an assisted living facility.
> Ms. Paley was a keen observer — and listener — of young children. She
> wrote 13 books about their social and intellectual development, including
> how they learn from telling stories, and received a MacArthur “genius”
> grant in recognition of her work.
> Her best known works include “You Can’t Say You Can’t Play” (1993), the
> title referring to a rule she laid down in her classroom to teach children
> about rejection. The book is “arresting in its title, magical in its
> appeal, and inspiring in its message,” the Harvard law professor and author Derrick
> Bell wrote
> <https://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/06/books/a-kindergarten-cliquebuster.html?module=inline>in
> The New York Times Book Review. He said it illustrated “how the teacher’s
> art can attack the evil of exclusion at its childhood root.”
>
> In “White Teacher” (1979), she described her reluctance to talk about race
> as a white teacher in an integrated school. Sixteen years later she wrote
> “Kwanzaa and Me,” in which she confronted racism head on.
> Her book “The Girl With the Brown Crayon” (1997), which followed a girl’s
> discoveries during a year of reading works by the children’s author Leo
> Lionni <https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/authors/leo-lionni/>, won
> Harvard University Press’s annual prize for outstanding publication about
> education and society.
> Ms. Paley’s teaching approach involved asking children to describe an
> event, sometimes with only a few words, and then to dramatize it with their
> classmates. This taught them language skills but also compassion, fairness
> and how to negotiate relationships.
> “She was as much an artist as a teacher, creative and playful to the end
> of her life,” John Hornstein, a child development specialist at Tufts
> University, said in an interview. “She is known in the field for her use of
> storytelling, but the method she developed is far more than that. It is a
> way in which young children join a complex and diverse social world.”
> Ms. Paley developed her methods over 37 years of teaching, most of them
> spent at the innovative, academically rigorous University of Chicago
> Laboratory Schools <https://www.ucls.uchicago.edu/>. While there, she won
> her MacArthur award in 1989 at age 60. She is believed to be the only
> person to win the grant while working as a kindergarten teacher.
>
> In addition to teaching children, she mentored a generation of teachers,
> held workshops and lectured about her experiences in the classroom. Her
> methods of storytelling and acting have been adopted elsewhere, notably in
> Boston, where the public school system has incorporated
> <https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3qKorUGb2mHaGZkNm10cTd4WVE/view> them
> into its curriculum.
> But they met with some resistance from the education establishment,
> especially as the No Child Left Behind
> <https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/10/opinion/why-the-new-education-law-is-good-for-children-left-behind.html?module=inline> Act,
> which required standardized testing, became law in 2002.
> “She wasn’t mainstream, and she wasn’t a curriculum person,” Mr. Hornstein
> said. “To her, teaching was not about meeting a bunch of core requirements
> that you can quantify; it was about being a human being.”
>
> [image: The methods of Ms. Paley, shown here in 1989, were influential,
> and were adopted by the Boston school system. But they were at odds with
> the increasing emphasis nationwide on testing.]
> The methods of Ms. Paley, shown here in 1989, were influential, and were
> adopted by the Boston school system. But they were at odds with the
> increasing emphasis nationwide on testing.CreditSpecial Collections
> Research Center, University of Chicago Library.
> In her book “The Boy Who Would Be a Helicopter: The Uses of Storytelling
> in the Classroom” (1990), Ms. Paley wrote about a loner who becomes less
> isolated by acting in other children’s activities and stories, both true
> and fantasized, and inviting others into his imaginary helicopter to be his
> co-pilot.
> By using storytelling to make children feel included, Ms. Paley built
> trust in her classroom and extended that to problem solving, said Sarah
> Sivright, who taught with her at the Chicago Laboratory Schools.
> For example, she said, a student named Billy liked to play with blocks but
> never put them away. Ms. Paley and Ms. Sivright suggested that he not be
> allowed to play with them anymore. But his classmates said that that wasn’t
> fair because it was his favorite activity. They suggested instead that he
> simply be reminded to clean up after each session.
> “Billy actually did get better at cleaning up,” Ms. Sivright said. “He
> felt supported by his community.”
> Vivian Roslyn Gussin was born on Jan. 25, 1929, in Chicago to Harry and
> Yetta (Meisel) Gussin. He was a medical doctor and she a homemaker.
> Vivian received her bachelor of philosophy degree from the University of
> Chicago in 1947 and another bachelor’s degree, in psychology, from Newcomb
> College, the women’s college at Tulane University in New Orleans, in 1950.
> She married Irving Paley in 1948. He survives her, as do their son, David,
> three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Another son, Robert,
> died in 2017.
> Ms. Paley began her teaching career in New Orleans. There, she recalled,
> she felt burdened by an overemphasis on strict learning boundaries and
> memorization, and came to believe that such an approach stifled learning —
> and teaching. She described herself during this period as an “uninspired
> and uninspiring teacher.”
> She moved to New York and earned her master’s of science degree in
> education from Hofstra University on Long Island in 1965 and taught at the
> Great Neck public schools, also on Long Island, until 1971.
> She then moved back to Chicago, where she spent the rest of her teaching
> career at the Lab Schools. There she felt free to experiment. When the
> school day was extended from a half day to a full day, she decided to fill
> it with storytelling and acting.
>
> “She helped children use the tools they have, which are imagination,
> sympathy and make-believe, to understand themselves and each other,” said
> Dr. Joshua D. Sparrow, executive director of the Brazelton Touchpoints
> Center <https://www.brazeltontouchpoints.org/about/> in Boston, which
> studies child development.
> Gillian D. McNamee, a protégé of Ms. Paley’s at Lab and now director of
> teacher education at the Erikson Institute <https://www.erikson.edu/> in
> Chicago, said that after Ms. Paley would ask children what story they
> wanted to tell, she would connect it to other stories or to a book or
> something that happened in class.
> “Vivian gave us a blueprint for teaching children how to think,” Ms.
> McNamee said.
> Ms. Paley retired from Lab in 1995 but continued to lecture and hold
> workshops around the world until a few years ago.
> Storytelling, she wrote in a 2001 essay, “is still the only activity I
> know of, besides play itself, that is immediately understood and desired by
> every child over the age of two.”
>
>
> --
>  fiction is but a form of symbolic action, a mere game of “as if”,
> therein lies its true   function and its potential for effecting change -
> R. Ellison
> ---------------------------------------------------
> For archival resources relevant to the research of myself and other
> members of LCHC, visit
> lchc.ucsd.edu.  For a narrative history of the research of LCHC, visit
> lchcautobio.ucsd.edu.
>
>
>

-- 
Robert Lake  Ed.D.
Professor of Social Foundations of Education
Dept. of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading
Georgia Southern University
P. O. Box 8144, Statesboro, GA  30460
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