Have you been sceptical yet? if you have, I wasn't paying attention, sorry. Remind me.
I say this because I totally share your scepticism, I'd go further and say that I'm sick to the back teeth with all the guff about the wonder of play.
It reminds me dreadfully of another reminiscence, from the middle of the last century: Hollywood was eulogising the noble savages of cowboy films while the very last remnants of those native nations were herded onto the very worst pockets of land, and rehomed when America's minerals were found to be hidden beneath them.
Don't it always come to pass, you don't know what you've got till it's gone?
Has children's free play gone? is that why all these eulogies?