The Benefits of Playing by Kaitlyn

The Benefits of Playing by Kaitlyn - September 2025 Scholarship Essay

Little children fairly skip into a school building, small backpacks hanging from their shoulders. The anticipation is palpable as they almost run in their haste to enter the classroom. It is their first day of kindergarten, and these kids have never been more excited for anything in their lives. Imagine all of the things they will learn! Letters and sounds, numbers and math, they want to know it all. They hunger for the knowledge that their teacher will bestow upon them.
Fast forward a few years, and these same children walk into school again, some of them for the last time. Today marks the final day of their senior year of high school. And they can't wait to leave it all behind.
This is sadly the story of many kids in the American school system today. Children come in excited to learn as kindergartners, and leave as seniors feeling like they've finished a long and laborious task. Any love for learning that they bring in is lost by the time they graduate.
Some of this is due simply to the temperament of the students. There will always be students who never wanted to come to school in the first place, and have been waiting for graduation since elementary school. Most children, however, genuinely love to learn, but seem to lose that love the longer they are in an institution dedicated to learning. This is where the real issue of our education system lies.
In elementary school, and particularly kindergarten, learning is seen as something fun, almost a game. Children learn through play, and have fun doing it. That fun gives them greater motivation to continue learning, which in turn continues the fun. This positive feedback loop gives both the instructor and the students a fulfilling experience, and teaches the children what they need to know in the process. After the first few years of school, however, this learning through play is lost, and kids begin to dislike school and the learning that comes with it.
The biggest thing I would like to see change in the world of education in the next ten years is the reintroduction of learning through play. Children, and little kids in particular, learn best this way. Children have not yet developed the skills needed to sit at a desk all day, and not make a peep while the teacher talks. Learning through play allows these skills to be built slowly, while still encouraging the children to do what they naturally want to do: have fun. By making lessons into games, and lectures into sport, children are more engaged, and will have greater retention of the principles taught. They will be less bored, and will see school as less of a chore, and more as an exciting experience. Learning through play will keep the spirit of curiosity alive in children, and keep it that way throughout their schooling.
This learning through play also need not be restricted to elementary school. Middle schoolers and high schoolers still have inclinations towards playing, though it comes out in different forms. They, too, can benefit from alternative learning styles to the lectures and lessons normally used in their classes. Physics and chemistry can be transformed through the addition of more labs and demonstrations to reinforce principles. English becomes entertaining when plays are acted out, rather than read, and students are given creative projects in place of essays after reading novels. Math, even, can be improved upon, by finding real world examples, as in the sciences, to demonstrate theorems and laws.
Not everything must be transformed into play, however; there is still some benefit to sitting still and taking notes, or writing an essay. These things have simply taken over too much of our educational system, and stifle the natural creativity and curiosity of our students. Bringing their inclination to play and fun back to a greater extent inside the classroom will bring benefits upon benefits in their academic performance, attendance, and attention, leading to a generation of better students and better people.