by David Thomas
I’ve changed my mind about what it really means to be a professor at play. It starts with how natural it is to play, travels through higher education’s participation in the de-education of play and ends up with me seeing a new mission in my teaching.
Let me start at the beginning.
When we are kids, we don’t need any coaching to play. Instead, life as a kid is a constant search for play. The usual limits on kids’ play includes sleep and just as often adults. The grown-ups always stand at the ready to tell kids to stop goofing around and pay attention, to stop wiggling and eat their dinner, to cut the chatter and pay attention. Kids play. Adult modulate play.
And while there is a clear benefit to teaching kids to do things beyond play, somewhere along the way it gets out of control and we grow up thinking of play as childlike. Play is one thing. Life is another. And that’s a tragedy, as the late, great Bernie Dekoven wrote in his book, A Playful Path:
“We have been taught to distrust play. Worse, we have been taught that we are not and should not be playful. We have been taught that play is childish, immature, destructive. Taught by people who have themselves lost the path, who were themselves taught by people who believed that fun was, can you believe this: sinful. Taught by people who have inherited a broken culture where common sense has been replaced by common senselessness. Taught that if we work hard enough and long enough and live a life that is dull enough, we will be rewarded – when fun is the reward.”
I was thinking about this turn away from play while listening to a panel that included Peter Gray and Stewart Brown. They talked a lot about the benefits of play and touched on how education was letting us down.
What I heard was a clarion call for all professors at play. For me.
I was thinking. “Where do we learn to set-aside playfulness?” While it certainly happens over a long period of time through a large number of cultural forces, I can’t help but see that higher education has mastered the removal of play and the insertion of a dour seriousness. Going to college is a rite of passage for many, and the passage is from the world of children to the world of adults. That’s a noble purpose. But it comes at a cost. We’ve been party to the great de-education of humans away from play. Admit it. We’ve seen It happen right in front of our eyes.
It wasn’t on purpose, and we have not all participated in that de-education to the same degree. But you know what I am talking about. The rhetoric of higher education is critical thinking, rational debate, graded performance and good jobs. Sure, we allow a little room for fun—a sorority here, a fraternity there. But in the classroom, we get down to business, the serious business of teaching everything except how to play.
I am almost ashamed to admit that this realization just occurred to me. Then again, it’s a subtilty easy to miss. We have a status quo that hides play and we get used to not thinking about it. Play is a left turn in a world that always is asking us to turn right.
But when I think about my own journey as a playful professor, I see how I missed this turn. When I first walked into the classroom many years ago, I was afraid of being called out as a fraud. So, I wore a tie and was more serious that a doctor giving a patient a terminal illness diagnosis. As I found some comfort in my own teaching skin, I loosened up and would crack jokes. I learned along the way this was a called social presence and it was a good thing for your teaching. I coasted along on instructionally clear outcomes and assessments and my humorous style for years. When Lisa and I formed Professor at Play, I started to think more intentionally about how to use play to engage students in learning and re-engage myself into teaching. I thought I’d reached the pinnacle of play at the university.
Then, just the other day, I realized I was only halfway there. Here’s what I have decided:
My true mission as a teacher is to help facilitate a certain kind of transformation in the lives of my students we call education. I want to show them new things, help them think about new things and guide them to develop habits of thinking in new ways. Sure, my discipline is architecture and what I teach is a bit bounded by that. But really, my goal is broader than the specific design objectives of my courses in the past. Now, as someone who believes in the power of play inside and outside of the classroom, I need to bring that into what I teach, and not just how I teach.
As I work on the course I am set to teach this summer, I know I have all the academic bona fides to cover the topics in the course I have designed. But now I must challenge myself to start teaching my students how to unlearn being no fun. I’ve always had a purpose in my teaching. But now I have a mission. To help my students learn how to play again. That might be the most important gift I can give my students—the re-education of play.
I’m excited to realize this, but also a little scared. It sounds like hard work. It sounds risky. I am not even sure my students wont balk at the thought that they can play AND learn. But I have seen enough evidence and have enough support that I know it will be OK. If nothing else, this ought to be fun!