A few weeks ago, I read and reposted to NYRA’s forums an article by Alfie Kohn on children playing, and its being redefined to serve adults’ expectations of children.
Crap about how adults keep trying structure children’s play, making it all about and led by them, rather than just letting the children do it any way they want. Whether it’s “productive” in any way or not.
Totally agree. I found this part interesting, too:
3. Play isn’t just for children. The idea of play is closely related to imagination, inventiveness, and that state of deep absorption that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi dubbed “flow.” Read virtually any account of creativity, in the humanities or the sciences, and you’ll find mentions of the relevance of daydreaming, fooling around with possibilities, looking at one thing and seeing another, embracing the joy of pure discovery, asking “What if….?” The argument here isn’t just that we need to let little kids play so they’ll be creative when they’re older, but that play, or something quite close to it, should be part of a teenager’s or adult’s life, too.[4]
It brought back memories from college. A few times, I inexplicably carried around with me a miniature playground ball. And the looks and remarks I got were interesting. Of course, I threw it at a few of my friends’ heads and they weren’t too happy, but usually I was just strolling around campus, bouncing it around, or tossing it to people I knew and they’d toss it back. I was the first arrival at one of my classes and the teacher interrogated, “Why do you have a ball?” And I said, “For fun.” And he mulled this over and remarked that it’s perhaps therapeutic.
Therapeutic! Ha! Why must there be a reason? I just felt like having ball with me! It was fun. That’s reason enough.
Such boring and unimaginative people! Don’t have real fun. The desire has been squeezed out of them in a world that demands productivity at all times. And those who do have some unexplainably fun seem weird or immature. They’re just jealous! 😛
