During the year, our schools are busy slashing P.E. and recess to make more time for math. During the summer, we get ourselves worked into a tizzy that our children will forget their fractions. Darell Hammond Read Quote
Unstructured play gives kids the space they need to tinker and take risks – both vital for the budding entrepreneur. Darell Hammond Read Quote
Our country’s growing obsession with organized sports isn’t just hurting our children, but also our communities. As play is siphoned off to gyms and fields, fewer kids are playing in our streets, parks, and playgrounds. Darell Hammond Read Quote
Our education system is increasingly embracing a black-and-white way of thinking, in which ‘learning’ and ‘play’ are diametrically opposed. ‘Learning’ is the serious stuff that happens inside a classroom and can be measured via multiple choice questions and a No. 2 pencil. ‘Play’ is frivolous, fun, and worst of all, optional. Darell Hammond Read Quote
In an era of parental paranoia, lawsuit mania and testing frenzy, we are failing to inspire our children’s curiosity, creativity, and imagination. We are denying them opportunities to tinker, discover, and explore – in short, to play. Darell Hammond Read Quote
I was raised in a group home for 14 years, so I was a beneficiary of philanthropy. I didn’t have a family. The nameless, faceless strangers were my family. They gave me an education, put food on the table and clothes on my back. I am who I am because of that formative experience. Now I am paying it forward. Darell Hammond Read Quote
Public swimming pools, recreation centers, summer reading programs, youth jobs programs – they are all shutting their doors. And they are all facilities and programs relied on most heavily by low-income children. Darell Hammond Read Quote
We all have a natural instinct to protect children from harm. It’s never fun to see a child hurt, even if it’s just a scraped knee. But on the other hand, children need to take on physical challenges to learn and grow, and scraped knees and other bumps and bruises teach them valuable lessons about their own limits. Darell Hammond Read Quote
The national nonprofit I founded, ‘KaBOOM!,’ is on a mission to save play for America’s children, and has long been championing the cause in high-need communities. Darell Hammond Read Quote
As parents, we need to send our kids back to ‘old-fashioned’ outdoor summer camps, which have been on the decline as the demand for sports and academics-based camps has risen. We need to fight budget cuts to public parks programs and resist closures of public swimming pools and playgrounds. Darell Hammond Read Quote
