Principle 3: You can't play in the classroom

What's a classroom good for?

This is my third installment of "a play theory of learning" and I welcome your comments, suggestions and constructive criticisms.

A typical classroom is good for a lot of things. Well, actually not. It is a specialized learning environment where much of the learning takes place by listening, writing, memorization and repetition.

It's just a bad idea to play in the classroom because a classroom's design and function is ill-suited to the qualities of play.

Indeed, the classroom is part of a system designed to meet the needs of the institution as much as the needs of the learners. Most classrooms are designed with a specific purpose in mind: The most efficient delivery of knowledge in the least amount of time. The classroom is a container for student-teacher interaction -- a box that holds a rigid 50 minutes of structured time and space, designed mostly for a one-way flow of information from teacher to students.

How could it be otherwise?

It's worthwhile at this point to bring in the views of American educator and activist John Dewey (1859-1952).

Wait. Don't go.  I promise to make this interesting. Starting about 100 years ago, the needs of modernity and the industrial age dictated the design of the learning environment called 'the classroom.'  Even then, forward-thinking individuals were dissatisfied with the limitations of a classroom, starting with its furniture.

John Dewey, writing in School and Society (1915), recounts the following incident, which can be seen as a wonderful parable that I will call "These Desks Are for Listening":

Some few years ago I was looking about the school supply stores in the city, trying to find desks and chairs which seemed thoroughly suitable from all points of view -- artistic, hygienic, and educational -- to the needs of the children. 

We had a good deal of difficulty in finding what we needed, and finally one dealer, more intelligent than the rest, made this remark: "I am afraid we have not what you want. You want something at which the children may work; these are all for listening." 

From Dewey's point of view, this encapsulates the problem with traditional education.

Just as the biologist can take a bone or two and reconstruct the whole animal, so, if we put before the mind's eye the ordinary schoolroom, with its rows of ugly desks placed in geometrical order, crowded together so that there shall be as little moving room as possible, desks almost all of the same size, with just space enough to hold books, pencils and paper, and add a table, some chairs, the bare walls and possibly a few pictures, we can reconstruct the only educational activity that can possibly go on in such a place. 

He goes on to explain why it can be an unsatisfactory arrangements for education.

It is all made "for listening" -- for simply studying lessons out of a book is only another kind of listening; it marks the dependency of one mind upon another. The attitude of listening means, comparatively speaking, passivity, absorption; that there are certain ready-made materials which are there, which have been prepared by the school superintendent, the board, the teacher, and of which the child is to take in as much as possible in the least possible time.

So that is why you can't play in the classroom. It's all wrong. It's not set up for it. To play in the classroom you'd have go against not only the socialization of an institution and its members, but to fly directly in the headwinds of its physical structures.

Let's talk through three other objections to playing in the classroom.

1. You can't play in the classroom because the teacher has to remain in control.

In its most common use, a classroom is a technology of control.

The arrangement of things - desks, chairs, spacing, doors, windows, and sightlines - are designed with the idea of maximizing the ease with which a single teacher can observe and control student behavior from a podium in the front of the room.

At the level university education, the structural problems of the classroom are reproduced writ-large as the 200-student lecture hall. Without question, the lecture-only model of instruction is economical. But the key question is, economical for exactly what?

There is a myth that if the lecturing is on track, the student's learning is unproblematic. Yes, the semester is on-track, but likely much more from the institution's point of view rather than that of the student.

In the lecture hall model of education, knowledge-delivery to the student is seen as a kind of pay-per-view service that a skilled professional delivers to a near-passive recipient.

By design, a classroom is a place for lecturing (one-to-many delivery of information) as opposed to coaching (one-to-one consultation on the individual student's strengths and weaknesses). Coaching is a dialog between actor and observer; a dialectical relationship of thought and action. Coaching generally takes place on a field of play and not in a classroom.

Especially at the university level, we need to move away from the rote learning suited for childhood education, (memorization technique based on repetition) and create the foundation for each student to build his or her own integrative and imaginative understanding of the subject matter and its relation to the student's personal and professional needs.

In other words, a top-down communication of authoritative subject-knowledge must give way to a focus on the teacher creating a process or experience for each student, where each student is given the opportunity to integrate the instructor-transmitted knowledge into his or her own existing mental framework.

This is unlikely to take place in lecture halls because they are neither adaptive nor dynamic - and can't truly facilitate the development of individual skills at different rates overtime.

And everyone can agree that the delivery of great lectures does not guarantee the result of 'high quality' learning by the student.

In sum, a traditional university lecture hall is not necessarily the best learning environment.

A new geography of learning is emerging. We need to use the emerging information technologies to change the architecture and the design of information delivery. We need a place for dialog as well as lecture.  It's not so much about product delivery but the experience that you create for the student.

I want to imagine in an alternative to a classroom as an institutional technology of control; I want the institutions of learning to be technologies of freedom. And one the keys will be a playful mode of learning.

2. You can't play in a classroom because it's a place for "seriousness".

The classroom is a usually a place of constraint but it need not be. Again, it is helpful to call upon John Dewey here, specifically his monograph, "How We Think."

Is play really the opposite of seriousness?  Take a look at a child playing. If you watch closely, you will see how children, intent in their play, seamlessly merge playfulness with seriousness. The same can be said in other creative contexts, including that of the artist, musician and athlete.
Are they serious and playful at the same time?

Being playful and serious at the same time creates the possibility of an emotional or affective dimension of teaching and learning. The typical classroom often lacks an affective dimension. The affective dimensions of learning are feelings, emotions, and self-esteem. Often, positive feelings on the part of the individual student are prerequisite to generate the mental energy for rigorous thinking or other serious intellectual work.

It's not that we abandon the quest for rigor and exactness in the classroom. It's that we use the qualities of play introduce dynamic elements into what can otherwise be a very static sitution.

You can't play in the classroom because it is primarily an environment of control. Indeed, a classroom is the physical embodiment of an institutional-design trade-off: more teacher control achieved at a cost less student freedom.

In Dewey's view, we can overcome the dual dilemmas of (a) rigor versus relevance and (b) freedom versus discipline. What we need to do is to move from the static classroom to what he calls the dynamic learning laboratory.  In such an environment, as Dewey says, "Playfulness is a more important consideration that play."

What's more, learning needs to be about gaining identity and passion for one's vocation (and not mere work). That's a key affective dimension of learning often missing from a classroom.

If you Google "Play Theory of Learning" you find a statement by Dr. Stephen Yarnall who writes in Beyond Medicine (2002) that the play theory of learning holds that  "changes in thinking, feeling and doing occur most effectively when the mind is in a playful mode."

Okay. Here's the upshot.  How about if you compare:

(a) a "playful mode of learning" -- that is, using curriculum-based projects that are mentally challenging and involve interesting interactions with other people, with

(b) a "traditional mode of learning" that rewards "nose-to-the-grindstone" achievement where the teacher mandates that each student demonstrate measurable academic success through comprehensive testing.

Which system would you prefer to operate in?

3. You can't play in the classroom because the lesson-plan-as-received by the students will deviate from the mandated curriculum.

I will take up this objection in the next installment, which is called, "Games are not textbooks."