What’s the last thing you played as an adult? Maybe it was a game of Mahjong with friends or a book club night at a local wine bar. Perhaps it was a hike for those who enjoy being active outdoors. For most of us, I’d wager that it was probably moments of relaxation that came to mind most recently. 

For the children in our midst, this seems so different. They are constantly at play. And in healthy schools, they are constantly at work as well. For children, play and work are two very adult ways of naming what is so often one and the same for the youngest among us: Doing Important Things. Play is almost never pure relaxation (so boring, say the children I know). Solving puzzles in math class and dramatically chanting your Latin vocabulary with motions can feel like play, but it’s also work. Climbing trees and building forts can feel like work, but it’s also play. Both require real effort, and both are worth real effort. Both develop strength, skill, imagination, courage, and character. 

As a classical Christian school, Charlotte Mason’s educational philosophy helps shape our teaching methods. Children are born as individuals of worth, as “persons” (Mason’s terminology), and as such children are real people, living real lives, capable of real work. This means that the curriculum is not oversimplified or “dumbed down.”  Children are capable learners. They should be out playing in nature, and reading real books, and playing real games, and learning real truths about the world. 

Because we believe education is about the formation of the whole person, at ACCA we often talk about cheerful hard work and play. Play and work alike build the muscles of the mind, heart, and bodies of our students. 

The work of play (if it’s good play) builds strong people. In his book The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt describes the best kind of play as spending time outdoors wherein children decide what to do for themselves – they make up the games, competitions, crafts, and there is some risk of getting hurt. This helps build resilience while nurturing and strengthening all the things so inherent to children. 

A friend shared this with me shortly before opening the doors of ACCA for the very first time. From Theodore Roosevelt’s speech at the Sorbonne: 

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

That’s what a good education can do. To help children, through a vigorous education of play and work, to jump into the arenas of their lives right now, and to prepare to jump into the arenas to come.

I’ll be talking more about this at our Open Houses during the fall. If this sounds like the type of education that might be a good fit for your family, I’d encourage you to register for one of our events here. 

SEE ALSO: Meet Katherine Kramer: Founder and Headmaster of ACCA