Kyn Noel Pestano

Play as Both a Source and an Outcome of Development: An Essay

In conjecture to Vygotsky’s protest against the intellectualization of play and his

proposition of its structural origin and development, I have postulated that play can
therefore be considered as both the source and the outcome of a child’s development.

Play is two things, according to Vygotsky. First, it is essentially wish-fulfillment. It is an

isolated sphere of abstract consciousness modeled after reality which the child
formulates in order to fulfill an impulse, or a wish. A child has no concept of inert
patience, thus, everything for him/her must come or happen instantaneously, but this is
never always the case in reality. In order to address this mental burden, the child
creates a separate reality where his/her wishes may come to fruition using his/her
imagination. A child, not being able to ride a horse, may fulfill his/her wish of doing so by
using a stick and pretending that it is a horse. This example then leads us to Vygotsky’s
second essence of play.

Play is the child maturing into a level higher than his/her current state. This is observed
in the presence of rules, or self-imposed restrictions in play. The child matures
dramatically in a given situation in order to fit the demands of the game. He/she starts to
develop the thought of attaining maximum pleasure through repressing instantaneous
wishes and following rules e.g. winning a race. He/she also learns to dissociate the
semantic from the visual sphere of cognition. Here, the child may attribute the meaning
of something into an object that is visually not that thing i.e. the stick acting as a horse.
The child, paradoxically, starts understanding and grasping conditions of reality by
making an alternative one where he/she can be both god and subject at the same time.

With regards to the two structural propositions of play by Vygotsky, it can be concluded
then that pay is indeed both a source and an outcome of development, in the sense that
it is from this creation of an alternate cognitive sphere that a child first learns the
concrete foundations of reality, and it is through the child’s cognitive development that
the purpose, and thus the structure, of play evolves from a simple and aimless activity
into an intricate and rewarding game or imaginary situation bound by rules and specific
motives.
References: Vygotsky, 1933 “Play and its Role in the Mental Development of a Child