Child's play: Dorothy Howard and the folklore of Australian children. A book review and personal...

8/18/2019 Child's play: Dorothy Howard and the folklore of Australian children. A book review and personal comment

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Child's play: Dorothy Howard and the folklore of Australian children A book review and personal comment

Jean-Pierre Rossie

Darian-Smith, Kate & Factor, June (Eds.) (2005). Child's play: Dorothy Howard and thefolklore of Australian children. Melbourne: Museum Victoria, VII + 231, index, ill. The bookcan be ordered by e-mail: [email protected] (costs $AUS 24.95 pluspostage),

Book review

On receiving this book I had the intention to write a usual book review. However, whenstarting to read I was immediately touched by what Dorothy Howard wrote down in 1950about the need to build a bridge: from the children's home culture, and the oral literatureand traditional games of the playground, to formal school subjects such as reading,composition and social studies (p. 3) (note 1). From that moment I felt, as an advocate of thestudy of Saharan and North African children's toy and play cultures and of its pedagogicaland sociocultural use, a strong interest in her research and practice oriented approach. So, Icould not refrain from making personal comments and linking my research to hers. Yet, asthe analysis of the book must come first I put my reactions in the Comments given at theend of this review and numbered as follows (1) in the text of the review.

June Factor's introductory article A forgotten pioneer (p. 1-17) offers a penetrating analysisof Dorothy Howard's exceptional career. Born in 1902 in a rural area of Texas (USA) shestarted her career as teacher in 1923; a career she ended as professor in the Faculty ofEducation at the University of Nebraska in 1969. Almost from the beginning of her job asteacher she became an ethnographer and analyst of children's playlore and verbal lore. Atthe same time she developed a personal unconventional approach in teaching English basedon the conviction: … that by ignoring its pupils' lore and language, a school was alsoteaching children 'to be ashamed of their… backgro unds, so they are silent about thelanguage, beliefs and customs of their homes'. (p. 3) (1). Already in the beginning of the1920s and after establishing her failure to teach Standard English to immigrant children inthe classic way she innovated teaching by: Bringing the 'play poetry' and the 'patternedcadences' of the schoolyard into the classroom (p. 3) (2).

Reading this outstanding book seems to me so much more of interest because of thepertinence of Dorothy Howard's research and findings even today. June Factor's analysisshows that Howard's insights and attitudes were well ahead of her time. Insights andattitudes such as:

· Refusing to see traditional games as 'a museum collection of fossils' (p. 5).· Being aware of the particular situation of doing research in Australia as a 'foreigner' (p. 7)(3).· Using a research method combining questionnaires, interviewing children and adults,observation, taking photographs and recording audiotapes.· Promoting a positive view on the role of so-called unacceptable, vulgar or aggressive playamong children (p. 11).· Criticising adults and especially educationalists who value only 'adult-planned andsupervised play' (p. 13).


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· Searching for the two threads of folklore: continuity and change and recognizing that thestrong conservative force in children's play activities and verbal lore remains 'in perpetualconflict with its opposite, the creative imagination' (p. 9).

The next article Children, families and the nation in 1950s Australia written by Kate Darian-

Smith situates Dorothy Howard's research on Australian children's play within the political,economic, social and cultural context of the mid-1950's. This research, conducted betweenJuly 1954 and April 1955, took place shortly before the long-awaited introduction oftelevision… that by the early 1960s… irrevocably transformed the practices of everyday life(p. 21).

In her article Darian-Smith mentions some important aspects of Dorothy Howard's Australian play research project:

· A large-scale comparative research looking for tradition as well as change brought this American scholar into contact with a remarkably wide cross-section of the Australian

population (p. 20) (4).· The use of questionnaires issued to children aged 11 and 12 assumed a competentcommand of written English; children belonging to middle-class families (p. 31) (5) (note 2).· A study being conducted by a female researcher in an official position as visiting Fulbrightfellow based at the University of Melbourne (p. 19). In this respect Dorothy Howard recalledthat one of the problems she faced in Australia was 'the position of women in Australiansociety, especially of a woman who posed as a scholar and more especially of an American woman' (p. 33) (6).

This insightful article situates the Australian play research under discussion within thecontext of the post-war Rebuilding of the Australian family whereby children were seen ascrucial components of national development (p. 22) but at the same time an interest inchildren's culture and in its study was lacking. Under this heading the problems ofunemployment, insufficient birth rates and housing facilities are also discussed.

In a following section The Australian outlook Darian-Smith analyses the prominence ofBritish culture in the construction of Australian identity, a viewpoint that lead Australianscholars to believe that any children's folklore… in Australia would consist of traditionalgames originating from the British Isles (p. 25). This viewpoint was clearly contradicted byDorothy Howard who found in Australian children's games not only local adaptations butalso influences from other European countries and America. The role of a visiting Americanscholar in the context of a growing post-war American influence and the controversies itaroused are also discussed (p. 26-29), together with the mass-immigration in Australia of1.3 million Europeans and its incidence on school population (p. 29-31).

Two shorter sections refer to aspects of Boys and girls at play and of Childhood Freedoms.In the section Boys and girls the strong gender division in the games described by DorothyHoward is stressed. However, there is also evidence that this distinction was by no meansuniform across Australia or among Howard's informants (p. 33) (7). The final section of thisarticle refers to the changing attitude towards children's self-determined play inunsupervised areas, on the one hand, and growing adult intervention in children's leisureactivities on the other (p. 35).

Kate Darian-Smith's article, discussing the broader Australian context in which DorothyHoward conducted her research, clearly shows how important it is to link a scholar's


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research methods and research results to specific times and places instead of situating themin a geographic vacuum and a sociocultural no-man's-land. Yet, much of thiscontextualization necessitates a retrospective view, something that is difficult to do by theone conducting the research.

The central part of the book offers in chronological order ten articles on the 'undirected playlife of Australian white children' Dorothy Howard wrote between 1955 and 1965 (p. 41-185).The first and last articles with the same title Folklore of Australian Children (published in1955 and 1965) give useful details on the context, methods, problems and results of herresearch. These two reflective articles show that she viewed her Australian research as 'nomore than a preliminary study' and proposing that local young scholars should be supportedto continue this study (p. 43-44). Although Dorothy Howard touches upon these topicsalready in her 1955 article, it is in her 1965 article that she analyses more in detail herpersonal situation as a visiting American scholar (p. 170). It is in this last article (p. 171-185)that she answers more fully the question whether 'indigenous Australian games exist' herebystressing that change is a fundamental aspect of folklore and that 'scientific scholars find no

place for nationalism, provincialism or commercialism in the study of folklore which is apart of the history of the human race.' (p. 47) (8). She also pays attention to the role of the'juxtaposition of cultures – Anglo-Australians and Aborigines' that 'produced reciprocalexchanges, a few of which can be observed in children's play' (p. 178); and concludes with adiscourse on some philosophical and moral aspects (p. 181-183).

Five out of the ten articles written by Dorothy Howard and reprinted here discuss typicalgames of skill such as knucklebones, hopscotch, ball-bouncing games, marbles games andstring games and one article analyses counting-out rhymes. These articles offer muchdetailed information often but not exclusively gained through written and oral reports.Really interesting is the way in which this scholar analyses the evolution of Australianchildren's play, play activities 'influenced by history; climate; economy; topography; flora;fauna; by association with their Aboriginal inhabitants; and, most of all, by children'sinventiveness… (p. 171). A two -page article shows and describes a probably extinct 'uniquehandmade gambling wheel' (p. 119) and another describes the autograph albums that'Australian children in 1954-55, in the upper elementary grades were keeping' (p. 101) (9). As one can expect from a former teacher of English doing research among English-speakingchildren the 'verses and formulae' used in these games and written down in autographalbums receive great attention (10).

This book's final article Courage in the Playground: A Tribute to Dorothy Howard by BrianSutton-Smith (note 3) offers the reader a look behind the scene of Dorothy Howard's workas play and child scholar (p. 187-203). He hereby stresses her originality, courage andpioneer place linking this to her personal philosophy of childhood play (p. 189). In hischallenging and inimitable way Brian Sutton-Smith then starts to analyse several underlyingfeatures found in Dorothy Howard's approaches. To do so he mostly refers to informationhis female PhD students at the University of Pennsylvania have gained from their researchin folklore and children's play over the past 30 years (p. 190). This comparison highlightstopics such as Play as theatre (playing is a form of acting… or …acting is a form of playing)(p. 190-192); Violent caricature as a subtext (mock violence and real aggression in play) (p.193-195); Play as Machiavellian caricatures of power (issues of power in children's play) (p.195-197); Profanity as caricature (play… is always potentially a flexible duality of mimicryand mockery) (p. 197-198) and Player as trickster (p. 198-200).


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Brian Sutton-Smith concludes his article with a clear message: We need our archives ofchildhood to take on a somewhat more heroic character, to represent the fact that throughplay children come to an existential reckoning of their place within their own cultural worlds(p. 201). Such a message seems an adequate tribute to Dorothy Howard who herself was both an observer and crusader (p. V).

I hope my review shows that Child's play: Dorothy Howard and the folklore of Australianchildren offers important information on children's playlore and folklore. However, it alsocontains a detailed analysis of Dorothy Howard's career and Australian research (note 4).This certainly can stimulate students of play culture and folklore from whatever discipline toreflect on their viewpoints and practice, something this book surely did for me. Reading thisinteresting and useful book (note 5) I learned to know and to appreciate a remarkablescholar. I only regret this did not happen earlier.

Personal comments

1. Dorothy Howard's statement is still fully relevant in relation to today's situation inMoroccan schools and probably also in many other African countries. Although the schoolreform commended in the Charte nationale d'éducation et de formation of the CommissionSpéciale Education Formation, Royaume du Maroc (1999) (note 6) recognises the necessityof putting the child in the centre of the school's pedagogical preoccupations there is noreference to the child's active participation in this process by using local children's folkloreand playlore. Only in relation to physical education is it stated that the methods andactivities should favour among other possibilities ancestral games, collective games andoutdoor activities. ATFALE, until some years ago located at the Faculty of Education of the University of Rabat, worked out an innovative in-service training for preschool workers(http://www.refer.org.ma/atfale). In one of the brochures of the series Guide d'activitéspour le préscolaire on play in the preschool one reads that the preschool teachers mustcollect the counting rhymes, finger games, dancing games and children's songs of theircommunities so that they can use these regularly in their school program (Gaëtan MorinEditeur Maghreb, 1997: 8-9). In the next volume of this series of practical guides, on thephysical activity of the young child, it is said in the context of a physical education centredon the child's needs, that to be able to do so the spontaneous play activity of the child must be favoured (1997: 3). Yet, the proposed examples do not reflect the Moroccan children'splay experience but are linked to a European background.

2. Just as Dorothy Howard went to a teacher college and worked as a teacher before becoming a scholar, I studied for social work and was employed as such for a few years before studying African ethnology and becoming a researcher. This is probably the reason why we have both been interested in finding practice-oriented possibilities for our researchon children's toys and games. My ideas and experiences on using Saharan and North Africanchildren's toy and play cultures for pedagogical and cultural action in developing countriesor for intercultural and peace education in a Western context are described in Toys, play,culture and society. An anthropological approach with reference to North Africa and theSahara (p. 189-210) (note 7).

3. I feel sympathetic to Dorothy Howard's sensitivity about being a foreigner and to thenecessity of situating oneself within the community where research is done. In her article onMarble Games of Australian Children she wrote: A tourist-collector, such as I, mayprofitably report a few careful observations. That is all. Wise conclusions demand many


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years of fieldwork and study (p. 143). Although the situation in Australia in the mid-1950s was closer to her own background, be it only because the same language was spoken, than when I did fieldwork in the Tunisian Sahara in the mid 1970s or in Morocco since 1992,similar disadvantages and advantages of being an outsider will have played a role.

4. June Factor mentions that this was not Dorothy Howard's own choice; she wanted 'tolimit (her) study to one school in one community'. However, a Fulbright research grant wasrefused for this project. She only got a grant when proposing to 'survey' play life in the wholeof Australia' (p. 6). This example shows how a research project needs to be adapted tospecific circumstances, something that cannot be avoided in many cases. A researchershould only be aware of this and as much as possible explain the consequences of thechoices that had to be made.

In retrospect I can now do this for my own research that oscillated between micro-scale andmacro-scale research but I certainly have not been aware enough of all this until these last years. After a micro-scale research on children's play and toys among Ghrib families of the

El-Faouar oasis in the Tunisian Sahara between 1975 and 1977, I started to look in the bibliography and in the Musée de l'Homme in Paris for data on children's games and toysfrom North Africa and the Sahara. This was not the result of a deliberated choice but of achange in my career making this kind of research the only one possible. When anotherchange in my career gave me the freedom to do fieldwork again I decided in 1992 to go toMorocco with the idea of verifying and supplementing the information gathered from the bibliography and the museum collection. After about ten years of regular two months staysin different regions the need to do micro-scale research in order to find more detailedinformation on children's toys and play became evident. For this and other reasons, I choseto settle down in the small southern Moroccan coastal town Sidi Ifni in 2001.

5. I never used this method of questionnaires. Such questionnaires are only efficient witholder children who master the used language and can read and write it quite well. MasteringEnglish sufficiently may not have been a problem for Australian children of Europeandescent although it could have been the case in the 1950s for such children of non-Britishfamilies. Handing out questionnaires in Standard Arabic (the official school language) couldalready be a problem for Moroccan Arabic speaking pupils and certainly much more for Amazigh (Berber) speaking pupils. What I did instead was use extensively the technique ofinformal talks with older children, adolescents, adults and elderly people, if necessary beinghelped by a French-speaking relative or friend of the questioned person. Anothermethodological problem with questionnaires distributed and collected by schoolteachers isthat pupils answering it will automatically censor themselves.

6. A researcher should be aware of the inescapable condition related to his or her sex, age,position and nationality and Dorothy Howard took most of this into account as her articleon Folklore of Australian Children published in 1965 shows (p. 170). Her officially endorsedstatus as American scholar certainly helped her to make the necessary contacts with schoolsand to have the right to hand out questionnaires to children of the last years of primaryschool. On the other hand being an American female scholar will have influenced hercontacts with Australian male and possibly also female adults.

The conditions in which I conduct fieldwork in Morocco since 1992 are completely different.First, I am an older Belgian man from a country with no past or present influence inMorocco. Secondly, I don't use any official or professional status. I present myself, with fewexceptions, as someone who enjoys living in Morocco and whose favoured pastime consists


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of observing children's play and toy making activities (note 8). These contrasting researchcontexts partially explain the diverging methods and results between both research projects.

7. I reached the same conclusion about Moroccan children's play. From the age of about five years a clear borderline exists between toys and games for boys and for girls. This is

especially evident in the data obtained by talking to older children and adults. However, when observing children's play this borderline is sometimes less strict than claimed and itstransgression not that exceptional.

8. Fifty years later Howard's point of view resonates in the introduction of my books in thecollection: Saharan and North African Toy and Play Cultures when I write that thesechildren's games and toys "… will, I hope, reveal the diversity of cultures, due to thegeographical, historical and sociological specificity, as well as the universality of humanculture, due to fundamental responses to comparable existential situations".

9. After consulting the list of the works of Dorothy Howard found in Appendix III it seems

that most information gathered during her Australian research period relates to rule-boundgames and games with verbal lore (note 9). The age group of the questioned children, thegreater value of such games according to adults in general and to scholars of folklore inparticular, certainly in the 1950s, together with Dorothy Howard's interest in verbal lorecoming from her background as teacher of English largely explain this research result.

My research on the play activities and toys of children between roughly three and fifteen years being based on living for longer periods with or amidst families in the Tunisian Saharaor in Morocco has resulted in much more data on games of make-believe.

10. When, as in my case, a researcher's knowledge of the children's mother tongue is limited,the collection of these verses and formulae is a difficult task. I therefore must rely oninterpreters, mostly male or female friends often belonging to the concerned children'sfamily or living in the same neighbourhood. So, the lack or limited availability of verbal lorein the description of play activities must be seen as a result of the researcher's limitationsnot as a limitation of the verbal expressions of the playing children. In making comparativeconclusions on children's play activities living in different communities one should always be alert for such specific research conditions.

Notes

1. Words in italic are quoted from the reviewed book. When the words in italic are put in between '…' they refer to lines written by Dorothy Howard herse lf.Special thanks to Gareth Whittaker for his help with improving the English text and for hisuseful comments.

2. Kate Darian-Smith remarks that this factor together with other factors may well accountfor the scant mention of the presence of migrant children in Howard's research notes (p. 31). Aboriginal children where also left out of the research project. Yet, Dorothy Howard was very much interested in Aboriginal children and their play with string games and other toys(p. 32).

3. Dorothy Howard had already been reading Brian Sutton-Smith's PhD thesis of 1954 TheGames of New Zealand Children before she visited him in New Zealand the same year andprior to starting her Australian research period (p. 188).


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4. Dorothy Howard's research and its relation to recent play and playground research arealso discussed in number 46, July 2005, of the review Play and Folklore. This review isavailable on the web at http://www.museum.vic.gov.au/playfolklore

5. 21 black and white photographs by the author, of playing children and of playthings,

together with 33 hand-drawn designs, all of hopscotch figures except one, illustrate this book in a first-rate edition, which lacks only a list of these illustrations. In the appendixesone finds a list of traditional games and play of Australian children by Dorothy Howard, alist of Australian schools visited or contacted by this scholar, an overview of the works byDorothy Howard, and a list of key resources for Australian children's folklore. Informationon the contributors and an index complete the book.

6. This document is available at http://www.cosef.ac.ma/demarrage/home.html - seenumber 131c.

7. Rossie, J-P. (2005). Toys, Play, Culture and Society. An Anthropological Approach with

Reference to North Africa and the Sahara. Foreword by Brian Sutton-Smith, StockholmInternational Toy Research Centre, Stockholm: Royal Institute of Technology, 256, 144 ill.CD included with the volumes of the collection: Saharan and North African Toy and PlayCultures.

8. Some information about the context, methods and limitations of my research can befound in the introduction and the autobiographical notes of Toys, play, culture and society. An anthropological approach with reference to North Africa and the Sahara (p. 11-16, 243-247). More information should be available in my forthcoming book Saharan and North African Toy and Play Cultures. Domestic life in play, games and toys.

9. Dorothy Howard's unpublished typescript Traditional Games and Play of AustralianChildren (University of Melbourne, 1954-55) contains information on other types of games,e.g. games of make-believe, as indicated in her own list of Traditional Games and Play of Australian Children (Appendix I). As she did not write any article on these games this makesme think that any information about such games that may be found in this manuscript will be quite limited. June Factor confirmed this presumption in her reply to my question aboutthe content of Dorothy Howard's unpublished typescript.

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