Child's play: Dorothy Howard and the folklore of Australian children

A book review and personal comment

Jean-Pierre Rossie
Darian-Smith, Kate & Factor, June (Eds.) (2005). Child's play: Dorothy Howard and the
folklore of Australian children. Melbourne: Museum Victoria, VII + 231, index, ill. The book
can be ordered by e-mail: publications@museum.vic.gov.au (costs $AUS 24.95 plus
postage),
Book review
On receiving this book I had the intention to write a usual book review. However, when
starting to read I was immediately touched by what Dorothy Howard wrote down in 1950
about the need to build a bridge: from the children's home culture, and the oral literature
and traditional games of the playground, to formal school subjects such as reading,
composition and social studies (p. 3) (note 1). From that moment I felt, as an advocate of the
study of Saharan and North African children's toy and play cultures and of its pedagogical
and sociocultural use, a strong interest in her research and practice oriented approach. So, I
could not refrain from making personal comments and linking my research to hers. Yet, as
the analysis of the book must come first I put my reactions in the Comments given at the
end of this review and numbered as follows (1) in the text of the review.
June Factor's introductory article A forgotten pioneer (p. 1-17) offers a penetrating analysis
of Dorothy Howard's exceptional career. Born in 1902 in a rural area of Texas (USA) she
started her career as teacher in 1923; a career she ended as professor in the Faculty of
Education at the University of Nebraska in 1969. Almost from the beginning of her job as
teacher she became an ethnographer and analyst of children's playlore and verbal lore. At
the same time she developed a personal unconventional approach in teaching English based
on the conviction: that by ignoring its pupils' lore and language, a school was also
teaching children 'to be ashamed of their backgrounds, so they are silent about the
language, beliefs and customs of their homes'. (p. 3) (1). Already in the beginning of the
1920s and after establishing her failure to teach Standard English to immigrant children in
the classic way she innovated teaching by: Bringing the 'play poetry' and the 'patterned
cadences' of the schoolyard into the classroom (p. 3) (2).
Reading this outstanding book seems to me so much more of interest because of the
pertinence of Dorothy Howard's research and findings even today. June Factor's analysis
shows that Howard's insights and attitudes were well ahead of her time. Insights and
attitudes such as:
Refusing to see traditional games as 'a museum collection of fossils' (p. 5).
Being aware of the particular situation of doing research in Australia as a 'foreigner' (p. 7)
(3).
Using a research method combining questionnaires, interviewing children and adults,
observation, taking photographs and recording audiotapes.
Promoting a positive view on the role of so-called unacceptable, vulgar or aggressive play
among children (p. 11).
Criticising adults and especially educationalists who value only 'adult-planned and
supervised play' (p. 13).

 Searching for the two threads of folklore: continuity and change and recognizing that the
strong conservative force in children's play activities and verbal lore remains 'in perpetual
conflict with its opposite, the creative imagination' (p. 9).
The next article Children, families and the nation in 1950s Australia written by Kate DarianSmith situates Dorothy Howard's research on Australian children's play within the political,
economic, social and cultural context of the mid-1950's. This research, conducted between
July 1954 and April 1955, took place shortly before the long-awaited introduction of
television that by the early 1960s irrevocably transformed the practices of everyday life
(p. 21).
In her article Darian-Smith mentions some important aspects of Dorothy Howard's
Australian play research project:
A large-scale comparative research looking for tradition as well as change brought this
American scholar into contact with a remarkably wide cross-section of the Australian
population (p. 20) (4).
The use of questionnaires issued to children aged 11 and 12 assumed a competent
command of written English; children belonging to middle-class families (p. 31) (5) (note 2).
A study being conducted by a female researcher in an official position as visiting Fulbright
fellow based at the University of Melbourne (p. 19). In this respect Dorothy Howard recalled
that one of the problems she faced in Australia was 'the position of women in Australian
society, especially of a woman who posed as a scholar and more especially of an American
woman' (p. 33) (6).
This insightful article situates the Australian play research under discussion within the
context of the post-war Rebuilding of the Australian family whereby children were seen as
crucial components of national development (p. 22) but at the same time an interest in
children's culture and in its study was lacking. Under this heading the problems of
unemployment, insufficient birth rates and housing facilities are also discussed.
In a following section The Australian outlook Darian-Smith analyses the prominence of
British culture in the construction of Australian identity, a viewpoint that lead Australian
scholars to believe that any children's folklore in Australia would consist of traditional
games originating from the British Isles (p. 25). This viewpoint was clearly contradicted by
Dorothy Howard who found in Australian children's games not only local adaptations but
also influences from other European countries and America. The role of a visiting American
scholar in the context of a growing post-war American influence and the controversies it
aroused are also discussed (p. 26-29), together with the mass-immigration in Australia of
1.3 million Europeans and its incidence on school population (p. 29-31).
Two shorter sections refer to aspects of Boys and girls at play and of Childhood Freedoms.
In the section Boys and girls the strong gender division in the games described by Dorothy
Howard is stressed. However, there is also evidence that this distinction was by no means
uniform across Australia or among Howard's informants (p. 33) (7). The final section of this
article refers to the changing attitude towards children's self-determined play in
unsupervised areas, on the one hand, and growing adult intervention in children's leisure
activities on the other (p. 35).
Kate Darian-Smith's article, discussing the broader Australian context in which Dorothy
Howard conducted her research, clearly shows how important it is to link a scholar's

research methods and research results to specific times and places instead of situating them
in a geographic vacuum and a sociocultural no-man's-land. Yet, much of this
contextualization necessitates a retrospective view, something that is difficult to do by the
one conducting the research.
The central part of the book offers in chronological order ten articles on the 'undirected play
life of Australian white children' Dorothy Howard wrote between 1955 and 1965 (p. 41-185).
The first and last articles with the same title Folklore of Australian Children (published in
1955 and 1965) give useful details on the context, methods, problems and results of her
research. These two reflective articles show that she viewed her Australian research as 'no
more than a preliminary study' and proposing that local young scholars should be supported
to continue this study (p. 43-44). Although Dorothy Howard touches upon these topics
already in her 1955 article, it is in her 1965 article that she analyses more in detail her
personal situation as a visiting American scholar (p. 170). It is in this last article (p. 171-185)
that she answers more fully the question whether 'indigenous Australian games exist' hereby
stressing that change is a fundamental aspect of folklore and that 'scientific scholars find no
place for nationalism, provincialism or commercialism in the study of folklore which is a
part of the history of the human race.' (p. 47) (8). She also pays attention to the role of the
'juxtaposition of cultures Anglo-Australians and Aborigines' that 'produced reciprocal
exchanges, a few of which can be observed in children's play' (p. 178); and concludes with a
discourse on some philosophical and moral aspects (p. 181-183).
Five out of the ten articles written by Dorothy Howard and reprinted here discuss typical
games of skill such as knucklebones, hopscotch, ball-bouncing games, marbles games and
string games and one article analyses counting-out rhymes. These articles offer much
detailed information often but not exclusively gained through written and oral reports.
Really interesting is the way in which this scholar analyses the evolution of Australian
children's play, play activities 'influenced by history; climate; economy; topography; flora;
fauna; by association with their Aboriginal inhabitants; and, most of all, by children's
inventiveness (p. 171). A two-page article shows and describes a probably extinct 'unique
handmade gambling wheel' (p. 119) and another describes the autograph albums that
'Australian children in 1954-55, in the upper elementary grades were keeping' (p. 101) (9).
As one can expect from a former teacher of English doing research among English-speaking
children the 'verses and formulae' used in these games and written down in autograph
albums receive great attention (10).
This book's final article Courage in the Playground: A Tribute to Dorothy Howard by Brian
Sutton-Smith (note 3) offers the reader a look behind the scene of Dorothy Howard's work
as play and child scholar (p. 187-203). He hereby stresses her originality, courage and
pioneer place linking this to her personal philosophy of childhood play (p. 189). In his
challenging and inimitable way Brian Sutton-Smith then starts to analyse several underlying
features found in Dorothy Howard's approaches. To do so he mostly refers to information
his female PhD students at the University of Pennsylvania have gained from their research
in folklore and children's play over the past 30 years (p. 190). This comparison highlights
topics such as Play as theatre (playing is a form of acting or acting is a form of playing)
(p. 190-192); Violent caricature as a subtext (mock violence and real aggression in play) (p.
193-195); Play as Machiavellian caricatures of power (issues of power in children's play) (p.
195-197); Profanity as caricature (play is always potentially a flexible duality of mimicry
and mockery) (p. 197-198) and Player as trickster (p. 198-200).

Brian Sutton-Smith concludes his article with a clear message: We need our archives of
childhood to take on a somewhat more heroic character, to represent the fact that through
play children come to an existential reckoning of their place within their own cultural worlds
(p. 201). Such a message seems an adequate tribute to Dorothy Howard who herself was
both an observer and crusader (p. V).
I hope my review shows that Child's play: Dorothy Howard and the folklore of Australian
children offers important information on children's playlore and folklore. However, it also
contains a detailed analysis of Dorothy Howard's career and Australian research (note 4).
This certainly can stimulate students of play culture and folklore from whatever discipline to
reflect on their viewpoints and practice, something this book surely did for me. Reading this
interesting and useful book (note 5) I learned to know and to appreciate a remarkable
scholar. I only regret this did not happen earlier.
Personal comments
1. Dorothy Howard's statement is still fully relevant in relation to today's situation in
Moroccan schools and probably also in many other African countries. Although the school
reform commended in the Charte nationale d'ducation et de formation of the Commission
Spciale Education Formation, Royaume du Maroc (1999) (note 6) recognises the necessity
of putting the child in the centre of the school's pedagogical preoccupations there is no
reference to the child's active participation in this process by using local children's folklore
and playlore. Only in relation to physical education is it stated that the methods and
activities should favour among other possibilities ancestral games, collective games and
outdoor activities.
ATFALE, until some years ago located at the Faculty of Education of the University of Rabat,
worked out an innovative in-service training for preschool workers
(http://www.refer.org.ma/atfale). In one of the brochures of the series Guide d'activits
pour le prscolaire on play in the preschool one reads that the preschool teachers must
collect the counting rhymes, finger games, dancing games and children's songs of their
communities so that they can use these regularly in their school program (Gatan Morin
Editeur Maghreb, 1997: 8-9). In the next volume of this series of practical guides, on the
physical activity of the young child, it is said in the context of a physical education centred
on the child's needs, that to be able to do so the spontaneous play activity of the child must
be favoured (1997: 3). Yet, the proposed examples do not reflect the Moroccan children's
play experience but are linked to a European background.
2. Just as Dorothy Howard went to a teacher college and worked as a teacher before
becoming a scholar, I studied for social work and was employed as such for a few years
before studying African ethnology and becoming a researcher. This is probably the reason
why we have both been interested in finding practice-oriented possibilities for our research
on children's toys and games. My ideas and experiences on using Saharan and North African
children's toy and play cultures for pedagogical and cultural action in developing countries
or for intercultural and peace education in a Western context are described in Toys, play,
culture and society. An anthropological approach with reference to North Africa and the
Sahara (p. 189-210) (note 7).
3. I feel sympathetic to Dorothy Howard's sensitivity about being a foreigner and to the
necessity of situating oneself within the community where research is done. In her article on
Marble Games of Australian Children she wrote: A tourist-collector, such as I, may
profitably report a few careful observations. That is all. Wise conclusions demand many

years of fieldwork and study (p. 143). Although the situation in Australia in the mid-1950s
was closer to her own background, be it only because the same language was spoken, than
when I did fieldwork in the Tunisian Sahara in the mid 1970s or in Morocco since 1992,
similar disadvantages and advantages of being an outsider will have played a role.
4. June Factor mentions that this was not Dorothy Howard's own choice; she wanted 'to
limit (her) study to one school in one community'. However, a Fulbright research grant was
refused for this project. She only got a grant when proposing to 'survey' play life in the whole
of Australia' (p. 6). This example shows how a research project needs to be adapted to
specific circumstances, something that cannot be avoided in many cases. A researcher
should only be aware of this and as much as possible explain the consequences of the
choices that had to be made.
In retrospect I can now do this for my own research that oscillated between micro-scale and
macro-scale research but I certainly have not been aware enough of all this until these last
years. After a micro-scale research on children's play and toys among Ghrib families of the
El-Faouar oasis in the Tunisian Sahara between 1975 and 1977, I started to look in the
bibliography and in the Muse de l'Homme in Paris for data on children's games and toys
from North Africa and the Sahara. This was not the result of a deliberated choice but of a
change in my career making this kind of research the only one possible. When another
change in my career gave me the freedom to do fieldwork again I decided in 1992 to go to
Morocco with the idea of verifying and supplementing the information gathered from the
bibliography and the museum collection. After about ten years of regular two months stays
in different regions the need to do micro-scale research in order to find more detailed
information on children's toys and play became evident. For this and other reasons, I chose
to settle down in the small southern Moroccan coastal town Sidi Ifni in 2001.
5. I never used this method of questionnaires. Such questionnaires are only efficient with
older children who master the used language and can read and write it quite well. Mastering
English sufficiently may not have been a problem for Australian children of European
descent although it could have been the case in the 1950s for such children of non-British
families. Handing out questionnaires in Standard Arabic (the official school language) could
already be a problem for Moroccan Arabic speaking pupils and certainly much more for
Amazigh (Berber) speaking pupils. What I did instead was use extensively the technique of
informal talks with older children, adolescents, adults and elderly people, if necessary being
helped by a French-speaking relative or friend of the questioned person. Another
methodological problem with questionnaires distributed and collected by schoolteachers is
that pupils answering it will automatically censor themselves.
6. A researcher should be aware of the inescapable condition related to his or her sex, age,
position and nationality and Dorothy Howard took most of this into account as her article
on Folklore of Australian Children published in 1965 shows (p. 170). Her officially endorsed
status as American scholar certainly helped her to make the necessary contacts with schools
and to have the right to hand out questionnaires to children of the last years of primary
school. On the other hand being an American female scholar will have influenced her
contacts with Australian male and possibly also female adults.
The conditions in which I conduct fieldwork in Morocco since 1992 are completely different.
First, I am an older Belgian man from a country with no past or present influence in
Morocco. Secondly, I don't use any official or professional status. I present myself, with few
exceptions, as someone who enjoys living in Morocco and whose favoured pastime consists

of observing children's play and toy making activities (note 8). These contrasting research
contexts partially explain the diverging methods and results between both research projects.
7. I reached the same conclusion about Moroccan children's play. From the age of about five
years a clear borderline exists between toys and games for boys and for girls. This is
especially evident in the data obtained by talking to older children and adults. However,
when observing children's play this borderline is sometimes less strict than claimed and its
transgression not that exceptional.
8. Fifty years later Howard's point of view resonates in the introduction of my books in the
collection: Saharan and North African Toy and Play Cultures when I write that these
children's games and toys " will, I hope, reveal the diversity of cultures, due to the
geographical, historical and sociological specificity, as well as the universality of human
culture, due to fundamental responses to comparable existential situations".
9. After consulting the list of the works of Dorothy Howard found in Appendix III it seems
that most information gathered during her Australian research period relates to rule-bound
games and games with verbal lore (note 9). The age group of the questioned children, the
greater value of such games according to adults in general and to scholars of folklore in
particular, certainly in the 1950s, together with Dorothy Howard's interest in verbal lore
coming from her background as teacher of English largely explain this research result.
My research on the play activities and toys of children between roughly three and fifteen
years being based on living for longer periods with or amidst families in the Tunisian Sahara
or in Morocco has resulted in much more data on games of make-believe.
10. When, as in my case, a researcher's knowledge of the children's mother tongue is limited,
the collection of these verses and formulae is a difficult task. I therefore must rely on
interpreters, mostly male or female friends often belonging to the concerned children's
family or living in the same neighbourhood. So, the lack or limited availability of verbal lore
in the description of play activities must be seen as a result of the researcher's limitations
not as a limitation of the verbal expressions of the playing children. In making comparative
conclusions on children's play activities living in different communities one should always
be alert for such specific research conditions.
Notes
1. Words in italic are quoted from the reviewed book. When the words in italic are put in
between '' they refer to lines written by Dorothy Howard herself.
Special thanks to Gareth Whittaker for his help with improving the English text and for his
useful comments.
2. Kate Darian-Smith remarks that this factor together with other factors may well account
for the scant mention of the presence of migrant children in Howard's research notes (p. 31).
Aboriginal children where also left out of the research project. Yet, Dorothy Howard was
very much interested in Aboriginal children and their play with string games and other toys
(p. 32).
3. Dorothy Howard had already been reading Brian Sutton-Smith's PhD thesis of 1954 The
Games of New Zealand Children before she visited him in New Zealand the same year and
prior to starting her Australian research period (p. 188).

4. Dorothy Howard's research and its relation to recent play and playground research are
also discussed in number 46, July 2005, of the review Play and Folklore. This review is
available on the web at http://www.museum.vic.gov.au/playfolklore
5. 21 black and white photographs by the author, of playing children and of playthings,
together with 33 hand-drawn designs, all of hopscotch figures except one, illustrate this
book in a first-rate edition, which lacks only a list of these illustrations. In the appendixes
one finds a list of traditional games and play of Australian children by Dorothy Howard, a
list of Australian schools visited or contacted by this scholar, an overview of the works by
Dorothy Howard, and a list of key resources for Australian children's folklore. Information
on the contributors and an index complete the book.
6. This document is available at http://www.cosef.ac.ma/demarrage/home.html - see
number 131c.
7. Rossie, J-P. (2005). Toys, Play, Culture and Society. An Anthropological Approach with
Reference to North Africa and the Sahara. Foreword by Brian Sutton-Smith, Stockholm
International Toy Research Centre, Stockholm: Royal Institute of Technology, 256, 144 ill.
CD included with the volumes of the collection: Saharan and North African Toy and Play
Cultures.
8. Some information about the context, methods and limitations of my research can be
found in the introduction and the autobiographical notes of Toys, play, culture and society.
An anthropological approach with reference to North Africa and the Sahara (p. 11-16, 243247). More information should be available in my forthcoming book Saharan and North
African Toy and Play Cultures. Domestic life in play, games and toys.
9. Dorothy Howard's unpublished typescript Traditional Games and Play of Australian
Children (University of Melbourne, 1954-55) contains information on other types of games,
e.g. games of make-believe, as indicated in her own list of Traditional Games and Play of
Australian Children (Appendix I). As she did not write any article on these games this makes
me think that any information about such games that may be found in this manuscript will
be quite limited. June Factor confirmed this presumption in her reply to my question about
the content of Dorothy Howard's unpublished typescript.