Free to Learn – Book summary

Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life

Peter Gray

Basic Books (5 Mar. 2013)

Book | eBook | Audio

About the author

Peter Gray is a leading expert in childhood development. He is a research professor in the Department of Psychology at Boston College. The author of Psychology, a highly regarded college textbook, he writes a popular blog called Freedom to Learn for Psychology Today. In 2016, Gray helped to found the Alliance for Self-Directed Education, an organization which promotes self-directed education for Children and teenagers as replacement for traditional schooling. He served as president of the organization, stepping down in 2020. In 2017, Gray helped to found Let Grow, a non-profit organization which promotes childhood independence and pushes back against the model of helicopter parenting.

About the book:

“What is it about our species that makes us the cultural animal? In other words, what aspects of human nature cause each new generation of human beings, everywhere, to acquire and build upon the skills, knowledge, beliefs, theories, and values of the previous generation? This question led me to examine education in settings outside of the standard school system, for example, at the remarkable non-school my son was attending. Later I looked into the growing, worldwide “unschooling” movement to understand how the children in those families become educated. I read the anthropological literature and surveyed anthropologists to learn everything I could about children’s lives and learning in hunter-gatherer cultures—the kinds of cultures that characterized our species for 99 percent of our evolutionary history. 

I reviewed the entire body of psychological and anthropological research on children’s play, and my students and I conducted new research aimed at understanding how children learn through play. Such work led me to understand how children’s strong drives to play and explore serve the function of education, not only in hunter-gatherer cultures but in our culture as well. It led to new insights concerning the environmental conditions that optimize children’s abilities to educate themselves through their own playful means. It led me to see how, if we had the will, we could free children from coercive schooling and provide learning centers that would maximize their ability to educate themselves without depriving them of the rightful joys of childhood. This book is about all of that.”

I first came across Dr Peter Gray’s work in Ken Robinson’s book You, Your Child and School, then in How to Raise an Adult by Julie Lythcott-Haims. We watched Dr Gray’s inspirational TED talk and explored his blog. And we felt so inspired that we even wrote three posts on the importance of free play for children (check them out).

Finally, we are happy to share with you notes on Free to Learn – the book that summarises Dr Gray’s research and presents the evidence that free play is the primary means by which children learn to control their lives, solve problems, get along with peers, and become emotionally resilient. Dr Gray’s main message here is that in order to foster children who will thrive in today’s constantly changing world, we must entrust them to steer their own learning and development…through free play. 

Gray’s research points out the flaws of the current education system, and in the book, he shows how we can act—both as parents and as members of society—to improve children’s lives and promote their happiness and learning.

The book is super inspirational and will be insightful for parents and everyone who works with children. It is packed with great ideas, but in these notes, we’ll shed some light on just a few of them. So definitely grab the book for more.

Let’s jump in.

Key insights:

Free play is essential for healthy development

“Children are designed, by nature, to play and explore on their own, independently of adults. They need freedom in order to develop; without it they suffer. The drive to play freely is a basic, biological drive. Lack of free play may not kill the physical body, as would lack of food, air, or water, but it kills the spirit and stunts mental growth. Free play is the means by which children learn to make friends, overcome their fears, solve their own problems, and generally take control of their own lives. It is also the primary means by which children practice and acquire the physical and intellectual skills that are essential for success in the culture in which they are growing. Nothing that we do, no amount of toys we buy or “quality time” or special training we give our children, can compensate for the freedom we take away. The things that children learn through their own initiatives, in free play, cannot be taught in other ways.”

That pretty much sums up why free play is crucial for healthy development. Play is a fundamental need of every child (and any other mammal) – like adequate sleep, balanced nutrition and physical activity. And nothing can replace it. 

The problem is that now children have less freedom to play with other children, without adult direction, than 60 years ago. There are many reasons for the decline of play (check out our article), but the consequences are disturbing – according to research, nowadays, children are more anxious, stressed, and depressed. In short, mental illness in children is on the rise. 

One of the main concerns is that children who are deprived of an adequate amount of free play have less sense of control over their lives, which is crucial for thriving in life. As the authors of The Thriving Child wrote:

“Without a healthy sense of control, kids feel powerless and overwhelmed and will often become passive or resigned. When they are denied the ability to make meaningful choices, they are at high risk of becoming anxious, struggling to manage anger, becoming self-destructive, or self-medicating. Despite the many resources and opportunities their parents offer them, they will often fail to thrive. Without a sense of control, regardless of their background, inner turmoil will take its toll.”

Also, free play is the primary way children LEARN. And that leads us to the next point.

Freedom boosts learning

“Children do not need more schooling. They need less schooling and more freedom. They also need safe enough environments in which to play and explore, and they need free access to the tools, ideas, and people (including playmates) that can help them along their own chosen paths.”

Children learn the best when they have the freedom to explore the world around them while having fun doing it. Dr Gray draws his ideas on research and argues that kids are biologically predisposed to take charge of their own education. They come to this world burning to learn, and when we provide them with the freedom and opportunities to pursue their own interests in safe settings, they bloom and develop along diverse and unpredictable paths. And they acquire the skills and confidence required to meet life’s challenges. 

Also, freedom is a prerequisite of creativity, curiosity, playfulness and critical thinking, which are essential for efficient learning and developing a growth mindset.

The problem is that school takes freedom away from children. Gray compares school to prison and calls it “forced education”. Everything is controlled by the adults – children usually don’t have much to say. Moreover, they get punished if they don’t comply with the rules. All learning is perceived as work, to be avoided if possible, and not as joy and fun. Constant evaluation and pressure to get good grades to get into a good university are also primary sources of anxiety and stress. That’s how schools support the development of a fixed mindset with all its consequences. 

Ok, so if school sucks and we can’t change it much (yet), what are the alternatives? The short answer – unschooling or alternative schooling (e.g. democratic school) In the book, Dr Gray presents the case of the Sudbury Valley School, which was founded by Professor Daniel Greenberg. Definitely check out the book for more.

P.S.: if you want to dig deeper into the topic, we recommend reading Sir Ken Robinson’s books Creative Schools (notes) and You, Your Child and School (notes). The Future of Smart (notes) by Ulca Joshi Hansen also gives an excellent overview of alternative education.

P.P.S.: Our oldest son Max is really passionate about drawing, so we’ve tried to persuade him to enrol on an art club. Surprisingly he refused because…he doesn’t like to be told what to draw  

Curiosity and exploration

“Schulz and her colleagues showed that teaching can interfere with exploration. Four- and five-year-olds were allowed to explore a toy that could produce four different effects when acted upon in different ways. It squeaked when one tube was pulled out from inside another; it lit up when a small button hidden inside the end of a tube was pressed; it produced musical notes when certain parts of a small yellow pad were pressed; and it produced a reverse image of the child’s face when the child looked into one of the tubes. In the teaching condition, the experimenter deliberately showed and explained to the child how to produce one of the effects, the squeak. In the experimenter play condition, the experimenter squeaked the toy in front of the child, but did so as if for her own enjoyment rather than in a teaching mode. In the control condition, the experimenter did nothing with the toy before giving it to the child. The result was that the children in the control condition and in the experimenter play condition subsequently spent much more time exploring the toy, and discovered how to produce more of its effects than did children in the teaching condition.”

Yep, we cut down children’s curiosity when we tell them what to do with a toy (or, for example, with a math equation). And it means that they lose their interest in exploration and don’t want to play with it much. So here is a formula for effective learning:

Curiosity + Exploration + Play = Learning

A few years ago, I showed my boys two games on the iPad. So for a long time, they thought that iPad was just for playing these games, and they didn’t even try to explore it. Until they saw me clicking on other icons. Once. The same day they learned how to open YouTube, found the way to draw (and not even in an app – they managed to do a screenshot and then used tools to draw on it!) and made a photoshoot. They were jumping with joy (priceless) and sharing their insights with each other. And that leads us to the next big idea.

P.S.: Check out our post on how to keep the fire of curiosity burning in your child.

Children learn more together than alone

“Schulz and her colleagues allowed four-year-olds to explore a toy that had two brightly colored gears that both moved when a switch was turned on to operate a motor hidden inside the toy. The question posed by the experimenter to motivate the children’s exploration was this: What caused each gear to turn? More specifically, did the motor turn gear A, which then turned gear B; or was the reverse true; or did the motor independently turn both gears? The children could solve this puzzle by removing one gear at a time to see what happened with the other gear when the switch was turned on, but they had to discover this strategy on their own. Schulz and her colleagues found that children exploring in pairs were far more likely to solve the puzzle than were children exploring alone. In pairs, they shared knowledge as they explored, so each child’s insights became the insights of both.”

Two heads are better than one. Literally. Teamwork is an efficient learning tool! That’s a good case for having more teamwork and project-based learning at schools. 

And guess what? It’s true for adults as well – according to research, small groups do better than even the best-performing individuals! So if you have a problem to solve, get a team to help you. 

Playful mood improves creativity and insightful problem solving

“In an experiment performed after most of Amabile’s classic studies, Paul Howard-Jones and his colleagues demonstrated a way to improve artistic creativity. In their experiment, young children were asked to produce collages, which were then assessed for creativity by a panel of judges. Before producing the collage, some of the children were put into a playful mood by allowing them twenty-five minutes of free play with salt dough. The other children spent that twenty-five-minute period at a nonplayful task, copying text. The result was that those in the play condition made collages that were judged to be significantly more creative than did those in the nonplay condition. 

Other researchers—most notably psychologist Alice Isen, who is now at Cornell University—have studied the effect of mood on the ability to solve insight problems. Insight problems require some kind of creative leap, which allows the person to see the problem differently than before. Such problems often seem impossible up until the moment of insight, after which the solution seems obvious. A classic example of such a problem, used in countless psychological experiments after its development in the 1940s, is Duncan’s candle problem. 

In this task, research participants are given a small candle, a book of matches, and a box of tacks and are asked to attach the candle to a bulletin board in a way that the candle can be lit and will burn properly. They are allowed to use no objects other than those they are given. The trick to solving the problem is to realize that the tacks can be dumped out of the box and the box can then be tacked to the bulletin board and used as a shelf on which to mount the candle. In the typical test situation, most people, including students at elite colleges, fail to solve this problem within the allotted time period. They fail to see that the tack box can be used for something other than a container for tacks. In Isen’s experiment, some of the college student participants watched a five-minute clip from a slapstick comedy film before being presented with the candle problem. A second group saw a five-minute serious film about mathematics, and a third group saw no film. The results were dramatic. Seventy-five percent of the students who saw the comedy, compared to only 20 percent and 13 percent of the students in the other two groups, respectively, solved the problem successfully. 

Just five minutes of humor, which had nothing to do with the candle problem, made the problem solvable for the majority of participants.”

That is impressive. Feeling stuck? Play. Need a creativity boost? Play.

Play. Play. Play.

My goal now is to have a playful morning for the whole family to get into the right mood for the day. And become a more playful parent.

This idea also reminded me of the TED talk:

Playing video games is ok (but with one condition)

“The route to getting our kids outdoors is not to throw away the computer or the television set, no more than it is to throw away the books we have in our homes. These are all great sources of learning and enjoyment. Rather, the route is to make sure kids have real opportunities to play freely outdoors, with other kids, without interference from adults. Kids in today’s world need to become highly skilled with computers, just as hunter-gatherer kids needed to become highly skilled with bows and arrows or digging sticks. To develop such skills, they need freedom and opportunity to play with computers, the primary tools of today. But for healthy development, they also need freedom and opportunity to play outdoors, away from the house, with other kids. The key words here are freedom and opportunity—not coercion.”

Gaming is a hot topic for parents. And I must admit I feel relieved after Dr Gray’s words  

The secret of taming the beast is to provide kids with opportunities to play freely outdoors with their friends. Dr Gray brings up surveys of gamers indicating that most children who are free to play outdoors as well as with video games usually, over time, choose a balance between the two. Those kids who got addicted to gaming usually didn’t have the opportunity to play freely offline.

Trustful parenting

“Trustful parenting is the style that most clearly allows the self-educative instincts to blossom. Trustful parents trust their children to play and explore on their own, to make their own decisions, to take risks, and to learn from their own mistakes. Trustful parents do not measure or try to direct their children’s development, because they trust children to do so on their own. Trustful parents are not negligent parents. They provide not just freedom, but also the sustenance, love, respect, moral examples, and environmental conditions required for healthy development. They support, rather than try to direct, children’s development, by helping children achieve their own goals when such help is requested. This parenting style predominated through the long stretch of human history when we were hunter-gatherers. 

Trustful parenting sends messages to children that were consistent with the needs of children in hunter-gatherer bands, but are also consistent with the real needs of children today: You are competent. You have eyes and a brain and can figure things out. You know your own abilities and limitations. Through play and exploration you will learn what you need to know. Your needs are valued. Your opinions count. You are responsible for your own mistakes and can be trusted to learn from them. Social life is not the pitting of will against will, but the helping of one another so that all can have what they need and most desire. We are with you, not against you.”

Trustful parenting. Wise parenting. Authoritative parenting. Whatever you call it, it is the parenting style that helps children grow into successful adults. Kids are competent from birth and what they need from us is love, support and freedom within limits.

Dr Gray shares five great tips on how to be a trustful parent:

1. Examine your own values – the first step is to ask yourself: What is a good life? What sorts of experiences make life worthwhile? If you need some tips, have a glimpse into the science of wellbeing – check out our notes on Flourish by Martin Seligman, The How of Happiness by Sonia Lyubomirsky and Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar. Also, reflect on your own childhood and recall your happiest moments. Where were you? What were you doing? Who, if anyone, was with you? For example, thinking back to my childhood, I was the happiest at my grandparent’s country house in Ukraine, where I used to spend every summer playing with my cousin without any adult supervision. Even loads of chores and garden work which I hated back then, couldn’t spoil all the fun I was having there. Proper “free ranged” childhood.
2. Let go of the idea that you determine your child’s future – your child has a right to chart his own life. You, as a parent, have an influence but no control over him. That also reminds me of Hal Runkel’s idea in Screamfree Parenting: we are responsible TO our children, not FOR them. Our job is not to manage our children’s behaviour but to teach them to manage their own. And one more important note from Dr Gray: “Trustful parents enjoy their kids; they don’t think of them as their project.”
3. Resist the temptation to monitor your child’s activities – basically, stop tracking every step of your child. With modern technology, the temptation is super high, but it’s annoying when someone is monitoring your life 24/7. Children have a right to privacy and opportunities to experiment without being judged.
4. Find or create safe places for children to play and explore – for example, you can move to a play-friendly neighbourhood, go for a holiday with another family so kids can play together, or sign your kids up for a forest school. Be creative.
5. Consider alternatives to conventional schooling – homeschooling, unschooling, democratic school, Montessori, Krishnamurti, Steiner school – whatever works best for your child.

Question for you – how can you be a more trustful parent?

Action steps for you:

1. Have a think about how you can bring more free play into your child’s life (check out our article for ideas).
2. Welcome the idea of playfulness in your life and have fun. Think about how can you be more playful at home and work and model play to your children.
3. Practice trustful parenting – create opportunities for your child to explore the world freely and safely.

Quotes from the book:

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