It's rarely a challenge to generate excitement for something a child already wants to do, so why not allow a child to follow his or her own interests? Advocates of interest-based learning, child-led learning, and unschooling all recommend this approach.
Sometimes it's easy to go along with a child's choices: when a ten-year-old happily spends every day reading stacks of books, no one is likely to complain. Other times, it's more difficult: if that same ten-year-old devotes hours every day to playing with Barbie dolls or video games, we are likely to think she should stop "playing" and make "better" use of her time.
How much playing is too much? What role should parents and teachers have in setting limits? As a home educator, I have struggled to answer these questions for myself while also considering the larger implications of how we as a society choose to educate our children.
