Playing

When Helena was six or seven months old, my parents bought a Johnny Jump-Up for her; in fact, the thing is called a Sassy Seat, but the basic idea is the same: a baby sits in a harness hanging from a door frame, and jumps and swings.  To me, it always looked like great fun.

Back then, Helena liked the toy.  Liked it, but wasn't fascinated by it.  She would sit and hang in it from time to time, enjoying swinging back and forth, but there wasn't much jumping.  I put the seat away in the box that said "Made so that babies can strengthen their legs for walking and running, and improve balance and coordination."

Last week, Helena saw the Johnny Jump-Up, now stored away in her room here in Brazil, and then pointed to it.  "You want to play in that?" I asked, to which she nodded enthusiastically.  I set it up, she got in, and jump, jump, jump, with huge smiles on her face.  Now that the toy was part its date, past the time when she needed to "strengthen her legs for waling and running," now the toy made for joyful fun.

Perhaps I'm generalizing from scant evidence (though, after all, what is this blog, if not that?), but I wonder if the story of the Johnny Jump-Up doesn't tell us something really important about play and learning.  Today, in the United States at least, toys have to be for something.  They teach some skill, strengthen muscles, make babies more intelligent... the whole propaganda campaigns of toy companies are now built around the pedagogical capacity of things kids once just did for fun.  And it isn't just the US: I don't know how many school reform books I've read in Latin America about how kids have to "play to learn."

Here's the problem, though: the basic point of play is that it is pointless.  Not that we don't have reasons or goals within the game, nor that it is senseless, but it is play exactly because it is sufficient until itself.  I play because I like it, because it makes me smile; sometimes, I just play because I play.  When there is a goal outside the game, it actually detracts from play: if I play soccer just so I can get a scholarship to college, it's almost like I'm breaking the rules.  The pointless nature of play is one of the major points of genius of Calvin and Hobbes, especially the sport of Calvinball.

None of this is to say that play and games don't have consequences: they do.  They strengthen legs and teach coordination and keep us from dying of heart disease.  Soccer probably helped me get into college at Williams, made me friends at Harvard and in favelas all over Latin America... but these are all by-products.  In philosophical jargon, they ensue, but they cannot be pursued.  The moment these things become the point of play, the goal of the game, then the game is no longer self-sufficient, no longer complete... no longer fun.

When Helena started to play in the Johnny Jump-Up, she loved it because now she was competent in balance and strength, because she knows how to run and jump.  She loved to play in it because she no longer needed it.

There's something in this experience to teach me about my work, too.  When any of us in the non-profit world write a proposal for funding, we have to say what we're going to do and what the results will be.  Not a bad exercise; it makes us think and plan.  But this year, I did a major evaluation of Shine a Light's work over the last decade, and it's fascinating to see that we did most of what we proposed... but of the real impact on kids' lives, on public policy, on the organizations we worked with, we didn't play for any of it.  It ensued as a by-product, a by-product that turned out to me more important than anything we had planned for.

I like to think that education should always be like that.  There are plans, but in the end, the lessons will surprise everyone, even the educator.