We must employ conditioning. There's no doubt of that. They have to learn that there are certain ways they can move and certain ways they can't. This is conditioning. For the child's real opening they must have that world of play created by the adult establishing that safe secure space with them. If we mistake these two, if we get them mixed up and we're not aware of the child's need for the play exercise, as well as the conditioning. If we try to make the play the conditioning, or if we try to condition play, than we're going to mess up the whole neural development itself. We've taken a later adult concept and tried to inflict it on the child or impose it on the child out of appropriate age consideration, which then becomes conditioning and blocks the natural unfolding and absorption of their universe as designed by nature during that period.

M: We have what you call real learning that occurs in the state we call play. Then we have schooling, training, conditioning and behavior modification. Is there a place for both?

J: Well first we have to recognize there are ways in which we must employ conditioning with the child, right from the very beginning. There's no doubt of that. Particularly in the modern world where many things have to be off limits to that child. They have to learn that there are certain ways they can move and certain ways they can't because they'll be killed, it's just simply not safe. So this is conditioning and there are certain times when we're going to have conditioning of the child, that's obvious. But on the other hand, for the child's real openings and all, they must have that world of play established by the adult establishing that safe secure space with them. If we mistake these two, if we get them mixed up and we're not aware of the child's need for the play exercise, as well as the conditioning.  If we try to make the play the conditioning, or if we try to condition play, than we're going to mess up the whole neural development itself.  If you look at the world of the child as a dream, around 3 or 4 when they're beginning to be able to come into dominion over their own structures of knowledge about a world, self, and language and all inside themselves and want to create these inner worlds and then play them out in their own private worlds. This is a private world. But here we're worried about the child being socialized and we think they should all be crammed together to learn to play together, but they don't play together. Each plays in their own private individual world.  If they might all have to be sharing the same physical space, but they're not sharing the same mental world space at all. 

And then if we take the conditioning of schooling and interfere with that early period, making them sit at desks, conditioning their bodies not to move when all learning is sensory motor at that period. It requires movement of the body. All play, all movement, all learning of the child from that 4 to 7 period is verbal. They talk out their world all the time. They're always speaking to themselves. That plays a critical part in the whole thing. And suddenly we're making them sit at desks to attend abstract metaphoric symbolic structures restricting their body movement, and we're conditioning them.  We're trying to condition that mind. Modify those natural behaviors on the part of their adult ideas. Then obviously, you're not going to have the foundation laid for the very thing you're after later on, and their ability to handle very abstract metaphoric symbolic structures. The same thing with all the stages of play that I can see.

We've taken a later adult concept and tried to inflict it on the child or impose it on the child out of appropriate age consideration, which then becomes conditioning and blocks the natural unfolding and absorption of their universe as designed by nature during that period.

MM: The state of play with its curiosity and wonder remains the same, what changes remains the same. What changes is the type of activity that is appropriate for each specific age and stage of development. Let’s start at the beginning.

J: If you look at the period say from 1 to 4, imitation plays a critical role in it. Imitative play. They look out and they see their parents or their models doing certain things, they want to do the same kinds of activity within their own world. A great deal of metaphoric, symbolic learning takes place through that, the little child picking up one object to represent something else in the adult world. The little jar top becoming the mixing bowl that the mother's using. The little spool of thread becoming the automobile the father's driving, or whatever it might be. Representational objects, that metaphoric thinking, symbolic thinking all to imitate within a small world that they can control and monitor and manage, the great huge adult world that they're preparing themselves for. So this is imitative play which is the foundation for metaphoric symbolic thought that we use in abstract languages, mathematics, and chemical formulas and so on. But then you have a shift around four, what Piglet called the child the dream. The great period of intuitive thinking begins and the creation of internal worlds no longer just imitative, but now you're using the world you've got established to move within and create other worlds of your own making. We speak of the child's dream and their play is quite different from the earlier child.