Perspective

The perspective of You Can't Say You Can't Play is that of Vivian Paley, the book's author and main character. As mentioned in the character descriptions, Paley studied education and took her PhD from the University of Chicago. She spent many of her years as a self-described 'uninspired' teacher but eventually began to develop her own theories of education. She found that standard approaches to public education excessively subdivided subjects and placed unreasonably burdensome requirements on children. It also involved too much rote memorization. Her knowledge of child development helped her to elaborate a view of child learning where play features prominently.

Paley sees play as crucial to child learning and believes that many social problems develop from excessively hierarchical and exclusive forms of play. So she develops the You Can't Say You Can't Play rule as a remedy for these problems. She has the approach of a...