A-Playful-Path_DeKoven-web

supposed to be doing, with the fun of it. We didn’t just read, we played reading games. And
we played with reading. With the sheer fun of reading, o, I don’t know, braille, perhaps. Or
Morse code. Or chemical symbols perhaps.
And fun was had. And learning was had. And we definitely weren’t had. Except for once. In
one class I taught. Sixth grade. And all of a sudden I learned that the kids were going to be
subjected to a test that would determine whether they would make the academic track in
high school. It was what they call “the little death.” No, wait. That’s something else. But it
did feel like something died because of that test. Like, because of that test, we had to stop
working on inventing our own hieroglyphics. And suddenly the whole thing, even teaching,
didn’t seem like very much fun.
The Theater Of Children’s Games
It was 1969. We, me and my degree, found our way to an experimental, remodeled-factory,
magnet elementary school called “The Intensive Learning Center,” and the title of Curriculum
Development Specialist, with our own parquet-floored, carpeted-risers, theater-inthe-round
light and audio booth, within which to develop curriculum for the entire school
district, in deed. Me, I had to do something fun. So I had these 45 minute sessions with kids
from all over the 5th and 6th floor of a factory building in not-so-upscale Northeast Philadelphia.
First grade kids. Fifth grade kids. The lot. And I decided that me and the kids, we’d
reinvent theater right then and there. True to my understanding of the playful path, I wanted
us to start from scratch, from what we know, from the collective scraps of the lives we can
share with each other.
And the kids taught me their theater. And I played with them. And we called it “games.”
A curriculum is what everyone else called it, fortunately. Finally, in 1971, the Interplay Games
Catalog. Five volumes. One thousand games. Coded according to an elaborate system, so
that if the kids liked a particular game, the teacher could find another they’d probably like as
much.
And that was it. That was my theater curriculum. And they didn’t fire me. In fact, they
funded research. And I taught it to teachers. Games. I did these classes with teachers, and all
we did was play kids games, and talk about it all, and it became, well, deep fun. Sometimes
profoundly moving fun.
The Games Preserve
By then, the curriculum in my hand, we, me, my wife and kids, moved to the country and
built “The Games Preserve,” a retreat center for the study of play, where I, and anyone else
willing to brave the rural realities of my 25 acres in Northeastern Pennsylvania, could play
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