¶ … Conventional Representations about Ideas about Children's Lives and Experience?
Practices on the playground are gendered in nature and are representative of the adult social world and are repetitive in nature in the way of representative of socially established norms. AS well the texts show that the gendered behavior is based on a standard that is already set in society as to what is expected and required of the two genders in terms of their place in society.
Children are reported to use their play to reflect the adult world however; this reenactment becomes skewed and often comical as children attempt to mirror what they see in the adult world. It is held that school polities are often such that enforce the social standards and the example given is the separation of the genders during play such as seen in sports events in the real world in which teams are gendered. Girls on the playground often are put off by this and feel that this is unfair to them.
The playground is also reflective of the adult world in that social grouping of children form and there are individuals who are excluded from social groupings just as in the adult world. A combination of tactics were used by the children in doing so including turning their backs on those they wished to exclude, verbal exclusion as well as other methods. Exclusion did not always arise from gender-based exclusions but were based on such as ability to engage in certain games and specific skill-based exclusion.
Social groupings were also noted to exist in relation to socio-economic status of children. Domestic violence was reported as representative in the rhymes used by children as they jumped rope and this too is reflective of the adult world. The real world is intrusive and highly represented in the play of children and this theme runs throughout the playground activities of children.
