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Listen to thisWhen Stanley arrived at First Street, the boys' good effects on one another were much diminished. Yet even Stanley, from time to time, responded to the inducements and pressures of unsupervised play. One such occasion stands out in my mind and is worth describing, for it not only reveals the dynamics of play in a clear-cut way, but indicates that the nonintervention of the teacher is not a passive or nothing-at-all sort of thing, but exerts a particular kind of influence on the children.
The boys were playing dodge ball in the gym, Vicente, Jose, and Julio against Stanley and Willard. Stanley kept stepping over the center line when he threw the ball. The boys complained bitterly that he was cheating, but he threatened them and told them to shut up. All were afraid of him, but his cheating was really intolerable, and finally Julio yelled across the gym to where I was sitting on the floor, watching their game, as usual, from a distance.
"He keeps steppin' over the line!” I reply only with a nod.
“Well, it’s against the rules, man!”
Again I nod, indicating clearly that I know he is right.
Now Jos shouts, too, for they are all upset. “Well, tell him to quit it, man!”
I shake my head “no” and shrug. They understand that I’m saying, “It’s your affair, not mine.” They don’t like this a bit. It increases their annoyance. Julio, who is the best player on the floor, and who is by far the angriest, makes a violent gesture with his arm and yells, “Shit, man, I quit!” and walks off the court. But now Stanley runs up to him with a cocked fist.
"You gonna quit, huh? Well, I’m gonna break your ass.”
Julio cringes, but stands his ground and mutters, “I don’t care, man.”
Stanley is glaring at him, and Julio, somewhat mopingly, returns his stare. One can almost see the desires and apprehensions cross their faces. Both boys want to keep playing. The game was exciting; otherwise the argument would not have arisen. The rivalry was intense; otherwise the cheating would not have been so blatant, so much a deliberate insult. Stanley knows that he cannot force Julio to play. Even if his threats succeed, Julio will play halfheartedly, and Stanley, who is a good thrower, is especially dependent on Julio, who is a good dodger. Stanley sees his own pleasure in the game evaporating. He knows, too, that if he attacks Julio in earnest, the whole game will be destroyed, for the excitement of competition really does depend on prior agreements, and a fight would wipe these out. Too, Julio’s teammates, though they are not fond of him, will certainly express their solidarity with a fellow Puerto Rican. All of these deliberations are more or less visible on Stanley’s quite intelligent face. He had been sticking out his chin and looking at Julio through narrowed. eyes. Now he grunts and punches Julio lightly on the arm. Julio mutters, “Fuck you,” and walks off the court. He hesitates a moment, and then leaves the gym. Vicente and Jose call to him, “Julio! Come on!” “Maric'n! Come back!” But he has disappeared, and so they curse him and then yell, “Throw the ball, man! We can beat you anyway” – though they had been losing from the beginning. Stanley throws, and the game goes on, but it’s woefully lacking in excitement. Willard has said nothing all this while. His silence, however, and his sullen face make clear that his pleasure has been spoiled. Stanley notices this at once and tries to talk the game into life, raising a great hoopla and throwing as hard as he can. His own face, however, is wooden. Vicente and Jose are put out too quickly. The next round commences. Julio appears in the doorway and watches. Vicente yells to him, “Shit, man, come on!” but Julio shakes his head and mumbles, “No man.” Now Willard suddenly lifts his voice. “Come on, Julio, he won’t cheat no more.” And Stanley, who is holding the ball, yells, “That’s right, chicken! Come on, chicken!” and hurls the ball at Julio, who catches it and hurls it back. Stanley catches it, and screaming, “Come on, chicken! Come on, chicken!” charges up to the line “not an inch over “and throws the ball at Julio again. This time Julio dodges the ball, but he dodges onto the field of play, and Jose immediately cups his hands at his mouth and yells at Stanley, “Come on, chicken, quawk, quawk, quawk!” and in a moment the game is in full swing. The three Puerto Ricans, who are masters of derision, flaunt themselves as targets, sticking out their asses and waving their arms. They cup their hands at their mouths and yell in unison, “Quawk, quawk, quawk, quawk!” Stanley is grinning. He charges up to the line “not stepping over “and shouts, “Buncha fuckin' chicken over there!” and hurls the ball. Julio dodges the ball, puts his hand at his groin and shouts, “Yeah, man, you want a worm!” Once again the game is merry, obscene, and intense, though I should not say “once again,” for the boys are in much better spirits than before. Most important, they leave the gym as one gang when the game is over, talking animatedly back and forth.
* * *
The effects of this game on Stanley and Julio hardly need comment. But what of my own refusal to intervene? What did it mean to the boys that their teacher wouldn’t enforce the rules? Did it mean that he didn’t care? Hardly, for they had come to know me through hundreds of other situations. They knew that I did care, and they knew very accurately (probably better than I) just where my caring ended. My refusal meant the most obvious thing. It meant not only that the game was theirs, but the rules of the game as well. And so I was not withholding myself, but was in fact putting myself in relation with something much larger than the game, something which the boys had again experienced in other contexts. This larger thing was their independent life in the world. My proper role vis-à-vis their independence was that of an observer and protector, and this was precisely the role I had taken. The effect of this was to locate all questions of ethics and conduct in the experience itself, that is, in the boys themselves, and not in some figure of authority. The further effect of this important shift in responsibility was that each boy was able to experience the necessary relationship between his own excitement and the code of conduct which joined him to others in a social group. Which is to say that their play “because it was unsupervised “acquired the moral pressures which are inherent in games, for at bottom this is precisely what morality is: the sense of the necessary relation between self and others, group conduct and individual fulfillment.
It is worth mentioning here that most of the games children play are not invented by themselves, though certainly they are embellished a great deal and often give way to less highly structured, purely creative play. The games are a form of lore, a tradition which in certain aspects reaches back into tribal origins. We tend to notice chiefly the physical aspects of games “the movements and skills, the excitement – and these are so important that we have no doubt of their great value to children. But the internal dynamics of the games – the strong and simple structures which bring rules, skills, individuals, groups, losses, rewards, energy output and rest into coherent wholes – these we often ignore, though it is just these that deserve to be called social artifacts. They have been arrived at in the most pragmatic way, often over the span of centuries, and the fact that they still exist is proof that we prize them highly. I point this out because we adults – teachers especially – watching children at their games, tend to think that because the children are new, we ourselves have a great deal to offer. We neglect to observe that we are competing with a durable and compelling tradition.
This feature: An extract from Dennison, G. (1969). The Lives of Children: The Story of the First Street School. New York: Random House
