Early Career
Vivan Paley was born in Chicago, Illinois. After receiving her Ph.B. from the University of Chicago in 1947, and a B.A. in Psychology from Newcomb College in 1950, she began her teaching career in New Orleans in the 1950s, and later in Great Neck, New York. It was during her time teaching in New Orleans that she began to reflect on some of the ways in which childhood learning at the time was being choked by an overemphasis on strict learning boundaries (e.g., that children could only be allowed to learn how to write in capital letters, not lower-case) and perfunctory memorization.
While teaching in Great Neck, she began to reflect on how play can be the "most usable context" for interaction and intellectual growth among kindergartners. This view, however, flew in the face of what many early education teachers thought at the time, that with the rise of television's easily accessible portrayals of violence, children were becoming too intense and restless, and if anything, needed more vigilant limits on playtime. Many of her insights during this time laid the foundation for her later writings.
After receiving her M.A. from Hofstra University in 1962, she returned to Chicago, where she dedicated the rest of her teaching career. It was during the 1970s that she began writing the books on early childhood learning (see below) which have made her so well regarded in early education circles. Despite her status today, however, she has described the first 13 years of her teaching career as being an "uninspired and uninspiring teacher."
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