What if educational toys are actually a violation of children's basic rights? As someone who has spent a lot of my career designing toys with educational goals, this would be a pretty big blow to my work. I've always thought that learning is an inherently good thing, so why would educational toys be a bad thing?

As someone who is interested in the relationship between play and learning, I've often heard the fact that the United Nations declares play as a fundamental right to all children. At first, I didn't really get the point of it. Of course children deserve to play. Who doesn't want children playing? Surely we're all on the same side that if there's some sort of sicko going around stealing kids' toys and tearing down playgrounds - that person would be a jerk?

What I didn't realize is that actually the stance that play is a fundamental right doesn't only challenge people who are anti-play. It also challenges people whose life's work is in play, but for the wrong reasons. In order to understand what counts as “the wrong reasons”, let’s take a trip into the tools of moral reasoning.

One of the lenses I learned about in Michael Sandel's viral "Justice" series on YouTube, is that for a given dilemma, people are more or less "consequentialists" or "Kantian" moral reasoners. If you're a consequentialist, you think that as long as the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, something is moral. To a Kantian, there are lines that should not be crossed, no matter what the benefits may be. For example, Kant would say that you should not tell a lie that might save the life of a friend, but a consequentialist would say it’s right to tell the lie to save a life.

Consequentialism is initially appealing because it seems very rational, but there some situations where it obviously falls short. To borrow an example from Sandel's series, let's say that a conservation group wants to raise funds to protect elephants. They decide to hold an auction to allow one person to kill one very old elephant, who is past breeding eligibility. They estimate that they can raise 1 million dollars this way, and prevent at least 100 elephant deaths with those resources. What's your reaction? Does it sound like a "good deal"? Or do you think that there's a line there that is being crossed, and that by selling this elephant's life away, the conservationists are now no better than the very poachers they want to stop.

To go a little deeper into why a Kantian moral reasoner rejects the deal - they think that the act of saving those 100 elephants has been tainted. It's no longer something to strive for. This example is hard to generalize an intuition from though, most of life’s moral quandaries aren’t related to elephants. Let’s explore a more timely example.

Imagine two countries that both face a deadly pandemic. In one country, citizens must forfeit their privacy. Their government knows every time they pay for something, every time they get on a bus - you name it. In the other country, the government does not track them nearly as much. They live as a free person, walking around with no face mask, and going to restaurants like nothing happened. In the surveillance state, only 5,000 people die, but in the free state, 500,000 people die. Which country would you rather live in? Which do you think is the more moral society?

To answer these kinds of questions, we're forced to reckon with the “purpose” of these social practices. Is the purpose of elephant conservation to minimize the number of elephant deaths, or is it to prevent any and all unnatural elephant deaths? Is the purpose of life to live freely, or to live a long life? This practice (called Teleology based on “telos” meaning purpose) is a useful tool. Identifying the purpose of a practice is not always intuitive, so let’s explore one last example to make it obvious.

Imagine a person who sells luxury t-shirts, and decides to sell one for $50 that says “Black Lives Matter” on it. I think most folks would intuitively feel that it would be wrong if this t-shirt seller kept the profits from these shirts. The reason for that is that the purpose of social justice is to bring justice to society, and by using social justice to make money, this person is misusing it. The t-shirt seller might say “Hey I could have put anything on the T-Shirt, but I decided to help spread the message of Black Lives Matter with my platform. Isn’t something better than nothing?” On the contrary, it’s easy to articulate why this t-shirt is actually worse than doing nothing. These t-shirts mostly serve to enrich the creator, and then, as a side benefit, they advance the message of Black Lives Matter by giving it visibility. By using social justice primarily to enrich themselves, the side benefit of spreading the message is tainted. In other words, the profit motive of the t-shirt seller has a “corrupting influence” on their intent to advocate for social justice.

Now that we have some examples to build intuition, let’s dive into the example I led with for this piece, learning and play. It strikes me that there is a motive separate from play-for-plays-sake in educational toys: education. It’s in the name. This prompts the question - is that secondary motive a corrupting one in the same way as the t-shirt seller’s profit motive? In other words, is using play to trick kids into learning violating their right to play?

In order to answer this question, we have to answer this question first - what is the purpose of play? It’s my belief that the purpose of play is to explore the physical world, abstract concepts and ideas, one’s identity, and their relationship to others, on one’s own terms. In less pretentious terms, I think the purpose of play is to “be a kid”. I feel this way because when I reflect on my own play, this kind of play is what I cherish. Taking apart clock radios, digging holes in the forest, playing pretend with my friends, and sword fights with sticks. When I think about the kind of childhood I would want to provide for my children, these are the kinds of things I would hope to make space for.

So, let’s look at STEM toys for example, like littleBits - are they at odds with that purpose? Most of them seem to operate under the premise of “preparing children for the future” by helping them develop “21st century skills”. If we examine this critically, it is just one layer of abstraction over “making money” or “being successful”. On the one hand, it would be unempathetic of one to let children fend for themselves as they grow up and enter the working world. But on the other hand, Play is not the full set of things parents provide for their children.

A well-intentioned parent might say “Well, if I’m going to prepare my child for the future with parental advice, sharing knowledge, and helping with their schooling, what harm is there with mixing this with their play? Why bother being a purist and policing the separation of play and preparation? I was going to teach my kid about STEM anyways, so what’s the harm in making it fun? Surely some fun is better than no fun?”

We can reply “Yes it’s great that you want to prepare your child for the future, but the purpose of play is to be a kid, and explore the world on your own terms. By weaponizing play to teach a STEM lesson, you’re using play for something it’s not for. If you can introduce playful STEM learning and it doesn’t get in the way of your child exploring the world on their own terms - great, but if that freedom is compromised, we have a problem.”

How much do we believe that argument? Should we force the parent to deliberately make STEM unfun so that it’s not corrupting the act of play? I think the answer should be no. To give a contrasting example, there’s consensus that it’s wrong to make e-cigarettes in flavors that are primarily appealing to children. Another example that is less unanimous is that in some countries “loot boxes” (digital packs of in-game rewards that act like a slot machine) are illegal.

There is an emergent theme between these obviously-bad uses of things that appeal to children - they are at odds with the long-term interests of the children. This leads to the question, who gets to decide the long-term interests of children? Do parents have full rights to what is good for children? Or do children also have a say. I would take the moderate position that it’s fine for parents to introduce things to their children, but they shouldn’t tell children that they have to be interested in certain subjects or play with certain toys. This is probably cultural and depends on how different cultures view the role of parents, but at least to me I think children have a right to choose what industry they go into and how they contribute to society overall.

So while I don’t think it’s wrong to give a STEM toy to your child if they are interested, or if you want to provide a friendly introduction to STEM, I do think it would be wrong to force them on a child even when they are not interested, or provide STEM toys and not also complement that with a variety of other materials which allow them to explore other interests. Furthermore, not all toys are equal! Some will provide a great level of freedom to explore ideas the child is interested in (wooden blocks or LEGOs pass the test) whereas others would only support a narrow range of ideas (e.g. Star Wars BB-8 robot). I don’t think that anyone would argue that giving a child a bike is violating their rights, but maybe buying a child 10 different coding toys when they are not interested would be an infraction on their play, which should be used to explore themselves and the world, not a narrow definition of success, that may not even be relevant by the time they are an adult.

The U.N. has told us that Play is a Right for children, but what exactly does that mean? I believe that the intended purpose of the declaration of play as a right is to condemn situations where children are denied the ability to play, such as in detention camps. It defines that play should be possible, but it doesn't go so far as to say what the purpose of play is. I believe that through examining the purpose of play, we can extend the declaration of play to also imply a declaration of the right to true play, and a rejection of toys and play which fundamentally serve any agenda which is not in alignment with the self-determination of the child.