by David Thomas
The other day this popped up in a student assignment:
“I also agree when you spoke in the lecture about how there is ‘Play Shaming’ in education. I have always been told to never say ‘play, or playing with an iteration’ and instead use ‘experiment, iterate, and explore’ since ‘play’ is not serious, and that architecture should be serious to be more creditable.”
First, a little background. The class I teach is an online class called the Architecture of Fun. I teach architecture students about how to design more playfully and how to create more playful buildings. So, in one of my lectures, I was talking about the idea of design can benifit from a playful approach. My point was that they could use the principles from the class in more serious work—whether designing homes or shopping mall or hospitals. I also warned them that a lot of “serious” architects were pretty playful. But they didn’t often use the word “play” or even”fun”. They might use words like my student mentioned: iteration, experiments, explorations, experiments…the list goes on.
So, what surprised me to read this feedback from my student was that she was specifically being taught what I warned them about. Or as I shared the wisdom of Bernie Dekoven with the class:
“We have been taught to distrust play. Worse, we have been taught that we are not and should not be playful….”
Here was confirmation from my students that they are, in fact, taught not to play. It’s not an accident. They are being taught codewords to use to camouflage play. They are advised, in no uncertain terms, to be serious, even when play is the answer.
I’m tempted to go into a rant about why there is so much ugly and non-functional architecture. But that would distract from the real concern here.
Higher education is ashamed of play and as a result shames students who play. And unless we do something about it, the same depressing cycles of entitlement, radical individualism, lack of curiosity and dogmatic faith will continue. If higher education wants to continue to help students develop into empathic, curious and courageous citizens, then we need play. Through play we learn to take chances and risk vulnerability, we learn manners when playing with others, we embrace failure and celebrate success. We take the good with bad and value a smile after effort.
All of that is to say, what my student told me was why Professors at Play exists. We are here to change the world with the tools we have at hand as educators. We are here to play and teach others to play with us.