Play and Politics, A Serious History of Education

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Play and Politics: A Serious History of Education

by

Trevor Strong



PLAY AND POLITICS 1

Play and Politics: A Serious History of Education

Play is an important form of learning. Its ubiquity in the animal world, especially in

social and intelligent species, suggests that it provides some sort of evolutionary benefit. It

makes sense that a young animal might want to practice a skill in a non-threatening environment

before its use is necessary or apparent. The good feeling an animal receives for doing this

behaviour (often called “fun” in humans) encourages it to repeat the action repeatedly in order to

master it. Play has eluded simple theoretical explanations, but it has been defined descriptively as

behaviour that fits the following criteria (Burghardt, 2005):

It does not contribute to current survival.

It is self-rewarding.

It differs fr om “serious” forms of behaviour .

It is performed repeatedly.

It occurs when the animal is not surrounded by immediate threats.

Humans are a particularly playful animal and have a long period of childhood during

which play activity is most obvious. Even in adulthood the urge to play does not disappear, but is

transformed into more complicated play-based behaviours such as inquisitiveness and creativity.

Through culture, humanity has expanded play beyond its roughhousing origins into such

activities as games, arts, and humour. It might be expected that such a powerful and versatile

way of learning would lie at the heart of most systems and philosophies of education, but this is

not the case. Play is often ignored, sometimes discouraged, and even when it is promoted it is

often confined in an effort to achieve a particular pedagogical goal. Play is fun, yet education is

often serious. Why is this? I suggest that the attitudes towards play and education are politically-



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based, with rigid people and societies tending to discourage play, and more open people and

societies encouraging it.

Being playful is different from being serious. In the serious mode of thinking a person (or

animal) takes a stimulus at face value. For example, if someone is attacking you, and you take it

seriously, you will either run away or fight back with intent to drive off the attacker. In play, the

action (or idea) being presented is both real and not real at the same time: play is paradoxical. In

roughhousing, an animal will acknowledge that the other animal is attacking, but because it has

determined that it is not a “real” attack, it responds playfully, returning the attack without

causing harm. In humour (which is often manifested as a form of verbal roughhousing), a

seemingly aggressive statement can be used to bond instead of attack as long as it is received

playfully. In art, a representation of an object can be created that both is and is not that object. In

intellectual pursuits, mental play can allow us to create scenarios that do not exist, yet do exist at

the same time —Einstein’s thought experiments being one example. This is not to say that play-

based behaviour cannot produce profound results. It is through play that boundaries are tested

and sometimes even overcome. By treating a boundary — whether physical, psychological, or

cultural — playfully, a seemingly permanent barrier can be found to be porous or even non-

existent. Play can lead to the elimination of the assumed.

Play, in the broadest sense of the word, is a powerful learning tool. But because play can

be used to test boundaries, some cultures discourage it in all but its most basic forms. The

purpose of education is often to indoctrinate — to inform youth about society’s rules and

expectations and to ensure that they conform to them. This type of education is inherently

conservative; it seeks to preserve the social order. This helps explain the serious tone of much

education — education is the system that ensures the cultural survival of a people and for this to



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work there must be rules, and these rules must be followed instead of questioned. Things a

society deems sacred or taboo can only be interacted with seriously. You cannot play with the

sacred.

There is, however, another vision of education. This is education as a search for truth or

virtue by testing ideas instead of accepting them. This form of education involves asking

questions instead of receiving answers. Socrates turned conventional wisdom on its head by

assuming that he (and everyone else) knew nothing. The dialectal form of thinking he used can

be considered a type of mental play, with two people or ideas interacting with each other in order

to determine what boundaries truly exist. Socrates considered everyone and everything open to

this questioning. Some of those in Athenian society who held conservative views about culture

and education accused him of corrupting the youth and of sacrilege against the gods. In their

view he was playing with the sacred. Enough of Athens agreed and Socrates was executed.

Socrates did not think of himself as a teacher and created no school. That he did not

formalize his thoughts is no accident; his questioning approach to knowledge was inherently

anti-systemic. He did not even commit his thoughts to writing — it was his followers who carried

his ideas forward, Plato foremost among them. Plato used the Socratic Method but did not

attempt to directly emulate Socrates. As far as we know he did not wander the streets of Athens

questioning people, nor did he refrain from teaching as evidenced by his creation of the

Academia. Plato believed in the search for truth, but he wanted this search to benefit all of

society. In the Republic, Plato outlines a system of education whose goal is to discover a man of

such worth that he could be trained and serve as a Philosopher King. His attempt to combine his

idealistic goal with a practical political purpose led to a complicated approach towards play. He

advocated play and gymnastics for young children, but for older students play was more limited



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and prescribed. For example, he suggested that a child learning music could only pluck and sing

the exact same notes at the same time in order to be closer to perfection (Stamou, 2002) — it is

hard to imagine a more boring, lifeless and less creative form of expression. Plato believed that

dialectal thought (mental playing) was the highest form of learning, but that it could only be

attempted after proper training. In order to achieve this, the youth of Athens needed to be

exposed only to only the best of everything.

Aristotle came to Athens to study under Plato and, although he absorbed many of Plato’s

ideas, he did not feel limited to copying them. Instead of conceiving as education as being the

search for the ideal, he believed that the most important concern of education was to train a man

in the habit of approaching the golden mean. For him a good life required balance. Aristotle was

a teacher himself — the tutor of the future Alexander the Great, and the founder of the Lyceum —

and a practical man. His emphasis on balance included pleasure and play, and he thought it

important that citizens learn to “feel pleasure and pain at the right objects: for that is a true

education” (Aristotle, trans. 1943, p.173). Aristotle allowed much more leeway in play than

Plato (especially in regards to music) but still emphasized the need for students to be guided

towards works, and habits, of quality.

The philosophers of Ancient Greece “undertook natural philosophy as play or recreation”

(McClellan & Dorn, 1999, p. 56), and did not feel beholden to their mentors’ ideas — they were

constantly playing with the boundaries. This boldness of thought withered with the rise of the

Roman Empire where education was based on rote learning and the acceptance of standard ideas;

symptoms of a society of conformity. Quintilian reacted against this, suggesting that in education

the “first instruction be in the form of play; let the pupil be asked questions and praised for his

answers” (Quintilian, trans. 1938, p. 200) — Quintilian clearly saw the link between play and



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questioning. But Quintilian was not advocating the use of the pure Socratic Method, or even to

the balanced, but investigative, nature of Aristotle. Quintilian’s ideas were progressive for his

time (and some seem progressive even today) but he sought to create students who would

enhance the Roman culture, not question it. After all, all the good ideas were already out there

and the most efficient way of learning was to copy the best: “As the Greeks excel in precepts, so

the Romans excel in examples, which is better far ” (p. 228).

If you drew a line representing a continuum of educational approaches from

“ playful/questioning” at one end to “serious/dogmatic” on the other, Socrates would probably be

on one extreme and the early Christian Church on the other. In Christianity all knowledge was

considered to be from God, and faith alone was needed for its absorption. Play, therefore, had no

role — there was nothing to play with, there was only one way of knowing and that was God, and

he was sacred. “We reject everything which rests upon human opinion,” (Tatian, trans. 1956, p.

283) said Tatian, emphasizing the worthlessness of human inquiry. For a member of the

Christian faith, knowledge was revealed, not created, as evidenced by the instructions to the

Catechumens: “Let him be instructed how the world was made, and why man was ap pointed to

be a citizen therein” (The Apostolical Constitutions, trans. 1905). A student of Christianity was

given answers; there were no questions to be asked. Benedict considered, “Idleness is the enemy

of the soul” (Benedict, trans. 1896, p. 319), because in idle moments stray thoughts and ideas

could enter the mind. His Rule, therefore, strove to keep his monks perpetually busy which, in

theory, made playful thoughts impossible. Christian education was based on obedience and fear

instead of fun and play: “First of all, then, it is necessary that we should be led by the fear of

God, to seek knowledge of His will” (Augustine, trans. 1876, p. 311).



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The Renaissance combined the philosophies of the free-thinking Greeks with the faith of

the control-oriented Church, leading to complicated and tension-filled ideas about play. Erasmus

believed that subject matter should be of interest to the student, but that the child should only

choose from the best available (Erasmus, 1529). Like Plato he felt that play must be controlled.

He added that he had discovered the reason why this control was needed, a problem that had

“sorely puzzled the ancient philosophers” (Erasmus, 1529, p.366)— children were drawn to the

bad influences because of “Original Sin.” Erasmus thought that students should be “beguiled”

into learning by catering to their interests so that their studying would “hardly be distinguished

from play” (p.367). Erasmus was not alone in his guarded approach to play. Comenius promoted

direct interactions with objects, somewhat similar to play, except that the form of these

interactions had to have “exact order in all things.”(Comenius, trans. 1896, p.420). And Luther,

although he advocated radical reform and the widening of education to the entire population, was

concerned that good books would soon be “crowded out by the multitude of ill-considered,

senseless, and noxious work s” (Luther, 1524, p. 391). These thinkers thought that students could

play, but only under careful supervision and guidance.

The synthesis of Christianity and Greek philosophy, combined with the rising wealth and

complexity of society, created new demands and ideas about education. Locke, like Socrates,

considered virtue to be the greatest goal (Locke, 1823, p.446). But Locke’s approach to

achieving virtue was reactive instead of active. For Socrates virtue was a thing that could be

discovered, for Locke it was something to be imprinted unto a person through experience.

Therefore, instead of advocating going out into the world and exploring and challenging ideas,

Locke felt it was best for a student to be protected from bad influences and only exposed to good

examples. If a student fell into the wrong sort of crowd you would have to “undo again, and strip



PLAY AND POLITICS 7

him of that he has got from his companions, or give him up to ruin” (p. 444). Needless to say

Locke advocated an extremely controlled environment where the student could not pick his own

playmates.

Others, taking their inspiration from Nature, held a freer view of play. Pestalozzi

promoted discovery and experience with his students and abandoned the static styles of teaching

used by the church. “Let your child be as free as possible, and seek diligently for every means of

ensuring his liberty, peace of mind, and good humour ” (Pestalozzi, trans. 1905, p. 477). This

freedom to use play and discovery was rooted in his egalitarian view of humanity, that all people

were basically the same. Froebel, the creator of kindergarten, was perhaps the most forceful

advocate of play calling it “the purest, most spiritual activity of man at this stage, and, at the

same time, typical of human life as a whole — of the inner hidden natural life in man and all

things” (Froebel, 1826, p.499). He thought education should not be “ prescriptive, categorical, or

interfering” (p. 497), and advocated patience when dealing with children’s questions. Froebel’s

support of free play was rooted in his belief that “Man is by no means naturally bad, nor has he

originally bad or evil quality and tendencies” ( p. 502). Where Erasmus had based his theory of

play on the assumption of Original Sin, Froebel based his on the concept that humanity was

essentially good and therefore had nothing to fear from play.

The struggle between play and seriousness, questions and answers, is evident in the

career and thoughts of William T. Harris, an influential American educator. Harris was deeply

committed to helping America achieve the greatness he felt was its destiny. He was a cultural

conservative who strove to create uniform values for American students, but who also

recognized that individualism was important in the modern industrial world and that free

thinking, at least to some degree, needed to be developed. He was a strong advocate of



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kindergarten, and introduced the concept to American school, but he also valued habits over

inquiry stating that “the school pupil simply gets used to established order and expects it and

obeys it as a habit. He will maintain it as a sort of instinct in after life, whether he has ever

learned the theory of it or not” (Curti, 1935, p.591). He maintained the basics of reading and

writing, but also encouraged art instruction, although this was “as a means of cultivating the

feelings and curbing the appetites” (p. 581). In this he was following the well-worn path of Plato,

Quintilian, and Erasmus, his goal to expose students only to what was (as far as he was

concerned) best and moral, so that they could be useful and conform to society. Overall his

educational methods “tended to encourage, not independent thought, but devotion to the existing

order” ( p. 592).

The progressive movement reacted against status-quo educators like Harris. Francis

Parker, an early proponent of progressive education, wanted to create experiences that mattered

for students. He believed that “real work is interesting, like real play” (Parker, 1882, p. 611). His

association of work and play — that they could be almost the same thing — placed a value on the

person more than the system. This emphasis on play was grounded in his world-view. Echoes of

Socrates can be heard in his statement that “he alone is really learning who feels the immensity

of the truth, and realizes that all he knows, or can know, in this world, is but as a drop to the

great ocean of truth” (p. 608).

John Dewey, one of the most influential of the Progressives, suggested that a teacher

should not simply guide students but should also find their students’ inherent goals and

motivations and then adjust their teaching to this. This relativist approach is not in agreement

with educational systems that seek to install conformity of both moral and intellectual culture.

When Dewey said, “It is not true that some subjects and methods and acquaintance with certain



PLAY AND POLITICS 9

facts and truths possess educational value in and of themselves” (Burtt, 1960, p. 623), he refuted

the long-standing belief there were universal cultural truths that could not, and should not, be

questioned. He advocated for an open-ended system of education which developed the student’s

ability to think and adapt. “What is important is that the mind should be sensitive to problems

and skilled in methods of attack and solution” (Dewey, 1910, p. 631). For Dewey, a student’s

mind was almost always in some state of play with the world.

The ideas of progressive education had profound political implications and generated

strong reactions. George S. Counts, a progressive himself, argued that progressive education

should go further than simply educate, that is should also formally promote progressive values

such as the need to alter, if not dismantle, the capitalistic system and replace it with a planned,

socialized economy: “To my mind, a movement honestly styling itself progressive should engage

in the positive task of creating a new tradition in American life” (Counts, 1932, p.262).

Conservative educators reacted strongly against progressive education. William Bagley attacked

its relativism, claiming that in progressive education, “The need of common elements in the

basic culture of all people, especially in a democracy, has in effect been denied” (Bagley, 1938,

p.640). He believed that America needed an approach that taught “essentials” through a

“systemic program of studies and activities” (p. 644). Bagley considered democracy under threat

fr om totalitarian regimes and to meet these needs an educational theory needed to be “strong,

virile, and positive not feeble, effeminate and vague” (p. 646). For Bagley education was a

serious business indeed.

Education is still serious. It probably always will be. The political importance of

educational systems will always make them the plaything of politicians, patriots, and interest

groups. In recent years we’ve been told that creativity and innovation are the keys to student



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success, yet we have also been told that students and schools must be accountable, consistent and

measurable. Chomsky noted that the American school system is saddled with two opposing

purposes: to make good obedient workers, and to make creative and original thinkers

(Chomsky,1995). This seems to also apply to Canada and has led to the creation of a system that

is inherently at odds with itself; where creativity is formally encouraged, but where the practices

of the system frustrate and limit that very creativity. Our schools still seem to operate under the

assumption that “idleness is the enemy of the soul” and keep students constantly busy with

assigned work; seldom allowing them to simply explore, discover, and challenge. If we want our

students to be adaptable we need to give them real freedom to play — physically, socially,

intellectually, philosophically. A sandbox is not enough, they need a forest. It was said of Harris

that his conservative approach to education was all “the more striking because he realized that he

lived in an age of transition” (Curti, 1935, p.597). I think our current approach to education is

striking in a similar way.




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Play and Politics, A Serious History of Education

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