Playing at violence: lock-down drills, ‘bad guys’ and the construction of ‘acceptable’ play in early childhood

ABSTRACT

This study examines how acceptable play was framed for a class of pre-Kindergarten children by their teacher and classroom aide. Using comic subjectivity theory [Zupančič, A. (2008). The odd one in: On comedy. Cambridge: MIT Press], the author explores how children’s playing at pretend violence (bad guy and pretend gun play) is forbidden, but playing at real violence (in the form of active-shooter lock-down drills) positioned the children in the classroom as victims of violence, rather than agentic powerful players. As gun violence in the United States continues to invade school spaces, this paper crtitically examines how ‘acceptable’ play for young children is being framed and defined by outside forces rather than pedagogical and professional knowledge.

KEYWORDS:

• Play
• violence
• power

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Katherine K. Delaney is an assistant professor of early childhood education whose research examines intersections of policy, practice, children, families and communities in early childhood settings.

Notes

1 All names in this article are pseudonyms.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant [1019431].