Love, Risk, Joy, Engagement, and Reflection: Anji Play and the Truths of Childhood
A Spiritual Consideration
True Play is an important form of expression and representation for the child that reflects their spiritual and cultural worlds. In the child’s self-initiated, self-determined play, and in the child’s interaction with other children, there is a continuous and uninterrupted experience of failure and success, rules and freedom, process and product, and the laws and qualities of the natural world. The child continuously affirms the self in relationship to others, which is not only the natural need of the child in the process of physical and emotional development, but also provides the basis for that development to take place.
Anji Play is an approach based on five interconnected principles: love, risk, joy, engagement, and reflection. The teacher steps back but remains present when the child engages in play. The teacher keeps their hands down, mouth shut, ears, eyes, and heart open, and only then can they discover the true child. When the teacher discovers the child discovering the world, when the teacher discovers the true abilities of the child, they can share those discoveries with the family and community, creating an educational ecosystem bound by love, risk, joy, engagement, reflection, and the discovery of the truths of childhood. These discoveries and this relationship of love is not possible when the teacher’s ambitions, needs, and agenda define the outcomes of play and control the activity of the child.
-Ms. Cheng Xueqin, founder of the Anji Play Approach
Anji Play is the name given to an educational philosophy and approach to early childhood education developed over the last two decades by Cheng Xueqin in her capacity as superintendent of public early childhood education for Anji County, China. The approach took shape as a response to a national policy change formalized by China’s Ministry of Education in 1996,1 and further strengthened in 2001.2 These policies stated that “play should be the primary activity”3 of all early childhood programs in the country serving children ages 3–6.
Cheng, in her role supervising the 130 schools serving 14,000 children that she built at the outset of her administrative career in 1999,4 earnestly sought to implement this policy. She began by instructing her teachers and principals to create a range of realistic play materials from the super-abundant local resource: bamboo. She then asked her teachers to develop enriching, guided play activities that she hoped would elicit joy and learning. Cheng won awards and recognition at the local, provincial, and national level for this work. However, when she visited her schools, she found that, “children were only smiling with their mouths and not with their eyes,” and that teachers, and family members were working themselves to exhaustion and frustration creating “play” from which children derived no true joy.
Confronted by this startling realization, Cheng reflected on her own experiences of play as a child, and then asked her teachers, administrators, parents, caregivers, and community members to reflect on their most deeply held memories of play.
Now before you read on, I want to encourage you to pause and recall your own childhood. Think back to your earliest and most joyful memory of play. Where were you? Who were you with? What were you doing? What did you see, hear, smell, and feel? Close your eyes for a moment, if that helps. Now write down your memories in as much detail as you wish, and ask yourself, “Do the young children in my community get to have these kinds of experiences? What kind of play are they allowed and encouraged to do?”
When the adults of Anji County were asked these same questions, they recalled play in the natural world, play that took place over extended, uninterrupted periods of time, play with large materials drawn from the lives of their communities, play free of adult guidance and interference, play that often involved a degree of real or perceived physical risk, play that was guided entirely by their own needs and intentions. And if this was true play, it was certainly not the play being experienced by children in the kindergartens of Anji County.
In response to these community-wide reflections, Cheng asked her teachers to step back from play. She asked her teachers to allow children to take risks, to solve their own problems and conflicts, and to discover the world, themselves, and their peers on their own terms. She asked her teachers to remove all pre-planned learning activities and eliminate all unnecessary transitions from the child’s schedule. Children still had lunch, they still took naps and engaged in self-care on a schedule, but apart from maintaining these necessary, needs-based anchors of the day, the teacher was given autonomy to allow play and reflection to continue uninterrupted for as long as needed.
Once the teachers stepped back, a major shift began to happen in Anji County. Teachers began to truly hear and see their children for the first time. They felt the joy of their children as they observed them overcome challenges. They trusted their children, and their children trusted them back. Relationships of tension over teacher needs and control became relationships of love based on centering and meeting child needs, not least the child’s needs to be autonomous and respected, to understand the world with their bodies, and to move at their own pace.
Over the days and months that followed, children and adults connected authentically. The noise and distraction of experts and theory and learning outcomes and preordained curricula was replaced with the joyous cacophony of children and with the discovery of some basic human truths: that love is the safety of acceptance, of trust, of presence, and of reliability; that taking risks — doing something with an uncertain outcome based on a prediction — becomes the joy of discovery, and that the joy of discovery is the primary motivator for a love of life and learning.
Rainier Maria Rilke writes, “may what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children. Then in these swelling and ebbing currents, these deepening tides moving out, returning, I will sing you as no one ever has, streaming through widening channels into the open sea.”5 In the schools of Anji County we quickly find ourselves afloat in a sea of these free and unrestrained voices.
Peter Brown, Head Teacher at Velma Thomas Early Childhood Center, a Chicago Public School, recounts his first visit to Anji, and brings life to Rilke’s image of childhood, “When I stepped off that bus and walked into the courtyard of the school, I had a visceral, physical kind of reaction of just happiness. My eyes started watering, and what was it? It was mostly the sound and the feel . . . I don’t know how to describe it, but my . . . Maybe this sounds dramatic, but when I was a little kid . . . I’ll go back to this: I was once in an opera in Chicago, where I was standing on the stage, where this character of Werther, the Goethe story, he walks out into this place, and it’s so beautiful, he’s overtaken, and he sings this song that gives me goosebumps to this day, this aria. And that’s how I felt walking in there. It felt like this harmonious music of children’s voices improvised, and happiness, engagement, relaxed, and I just stood there for about two or three minutes and just listened and took it in.”
This joyous, fluid ease of play and connection is built on many specific and unique practices, which have evolved organically to become essential elements of the Anji Play approach. Teachers take extensive video of play. Children lead their own reflection on those videos on a daily basis. Every day, children draw pictures of their play that day, and the teacher transcribes their descriptions. Each of these practices has emerged from a commitment to reflection unguided by assumptions and outcomes, a belief in the power of hearing the child in their own voice, and seeing the child in their own image.
Cheng describes reflection as a practice that “transforms experience into knowledge.” This holds for both the child’s knowledge of the world and themselves, and for the teacher’s knowledge of the child and their own practices and decision-making as educators. Through listening and reflection teachers continue to grow, continue to question their own assumptions, continue to learn more about children and their abilities, and find joy in their calling.
“We have discovered that for some teachers, if they really want to hear what children have to say, that their whole state of being is at ease, and they listen closely and that in the process of listening they discover that children are speaking a wealth of information, and these teachers will be receptive to the information that they are hearing. And then some teachers want to hear children say what they, the teachers, deep down, want the children to say, things that they want to hear, and they will unconsciously overlook what children are actually saying. They can’t hear clearly and are unable to truly understand the child’s expression. And you can see that their physical state of being is one of anxiety.” Wang Zhen, Vice Principal at Anji Jiguan Kindergarten, explains.
Because Anji Play is defined by a foundational commitment to reflection and to listening, it thrives as a living, evolving ecology of practice, instead of stagnating as a fixed ideology defined by unbending practices. Psychologist Dr. Lawrence Cohen describes the depth and meaning that both children and teachers in Anji find in their reflection as a near religious experience, “in Anji, this discussion of play and really understanding it, it could be, I don’t know, it reminded me — I never read Finnegans Wake, but I knew this guy who had this small group, and they read Finnegans Wake every year, and they would meet monthly, and it was like reading the Torah. They would read it together on a yearly basis and find more and more depth to it. The reflection in Anji has that sense to it.”
The Anji Play approach has blossomed throughout China. It is currently a national educational priority, reaching over 270,000 children ages 3–6, served by over 21,100 teachers, in more than 500 schools. The Anji Play approach is also beginning to impact practice in the United States and Europe, challenging many assumptions about the role of the teacher, the value of true play, and the value of centering the child’s voice, experience, and knowledge first. This conception of learning from children upends traditional notions of the direction of knowledge, rather than knowledge being received by teachers from professors, and by children from teachers, practice and philosophy are now informed by the child’s discovery of the world, and the teacher’s discovery of the child.
As Lindsey Shafer, a coach for Early Head Start programs at KidZCommunity in Northern California explains, “I’m not sure teachers are usually given much time to share their expertise and their experiences. And so for them having the time where they are the ones providing the videos, they’re the ones providing their insights and reflections, they’re having the conversations. It’s very different from attending a one-and-done training workshop. Instead it’s this consistent time where we come together, and they are really the ones driving those conversations. It’s their videos, their curiosities, and it’s what they want to share. Teachers are so rarely asked, ‘what do you think about this? What are your thoughts?’ They are used to an expert coming and doing a training or assigning reading. Again, it’s a parallel to what we’re hoping happens in the classroom, that it’s really led by the learner’s reflection and discovery.”
Anji Play is non-denominational. The language of spirituality is not explicitly included in its practice in China. However, as Anji Play is adopted and adapted more broadly, it is possible for spiritual values present in the child’s environment to emerge in play and reflection. In that sense, Anji Play is agnostic and reflective of the culture in which it takes root. In our work to share Anji Play with educators outside of China, we have been contacted by evangelical Christian early childhood programs drawn to an ethos of love, by Buddhist programs interested in exploring the values of presence and observation in pedagogy, and by Jewish programs responding to values of reflection and a spirit of engaged community. Regardless of the specific belief systems of its practitioners, wherever Anji Play is implemented with faith and integrity, its practice will reflect deep, authentic relationships between individuals, their culture, and the natural world, relationships of trust, respect, communion, and reflection.
Anji Play was born into a rural Chinese culture with deep roots in Daoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, and a rich and multilayered history of spiritual beliefs and religious practices. In this context, Anji Play can be seen as reflective of a Daoist belief in the oneness of humankind and nature, and the veneration of the child’s natural ability to learn in the experience of play. Anji Play can also be seen as consistent with Confucianism’s humanist commitment to the goodness of the individual and the community, and the truth represented by the uncorrupted heart and mind of the child, a belief which culminated in the philosophy of heretical Ming Dynasty philosopher Li Zhi.6 Viewed through the lens of patriotism, Anji Play can represent a path to national strength: happy, healthy children, armed with the ability to overcome challenges and learn. But the practitioners of Anji Play spend little time untangling these complex strands, instead they are guided by a sentiment best expressed by a five year old student in Anji, “if you don’t take me out to play everyday, my heart will break into pieces, and the pieces will turn into mush.”
Author’s note: all quotes are taken from interviews conducted by the author.
Endnotes
1. Youeryuan Gongzuo Guicheng (幼儿园工作规程) [Working Rules for Kindergartens] (promulgated by State Education Commission of the People’s Republic of China Mar. 9, 1996, effective June 1, 1996) 1996 State Education Committee of the People’s Republic of China Order 25, http://www.moe.gov.cn/srcsite/A02/s5911/moe_621/199603/t19960309_81893.html (China).
2. Jiaoyubu guanyu yinfa “Youeryuan Jiaoyu Zhidao Gangyao (shixing)” de tongzhi (教育部关于印发《幼儿园教育指导纲要（试行）》的通知) [Notification regarding the Ministry of Education publication of “Guidelines for Kindergarten Education (provisional)] (promulgated by Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China Jul. 2, 2001, effective Sep. 1, 2001) 2001 Basic Education Department Document 20, http://www.moe.gov.cn/srcsite/A06/s3327/200107/t20010702_81984.html (China).
3. Ibid.
4. Li, X.L. (2008, Nov. 6). Yiwei nongcun jiaoyuzhongxin zhuren de shinian jianshou [Ten years of resolve for a county director of early childhood education]. Zhongguo Qingnian Bao [China Youth Daily].
5. Rilke, R. M., Barrows, A., Macy, J., & Rilke, R. M. (2005). In praise of mortality: Selections from Rilke’s Duino elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus. New York: Riverhead Books.
6. Lee, P. C. (2014). Li Zhi, Confucianism, and the Virtue of Desire. Albany: State University of New York Press.
