What’s wrong with education

• Our disability to Play
• Practicality: ♥ • • • •
• Theoretical: ♥ ♥ ♥ • •

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about education and why it is broken. What I mean by this is that children are so curious by nature, so inquisitive and full of questions. They have intrinsic motivation to grow and learn and they have fun being that way. Why is it that our educational system fails to use this intrinsic motivation? I’m all for learning and schools are necessary, but it is heartbreaking to see kids go to school full of excitement and eagerness and to see that hunger for knowledge and spontaneous curiosity transform into boredom and meaningless chores of repetition and random memory tests. I’m not remembering just my own school going experiences, but that of my own children too, and that of friends and colleagues. It seems like a lot of people do not have the fondest memories of learning and going to school.

Another thought that is with me lately is that as we get older, meaningless play -or better worded, play for the reason only to experience play- is suppressed and subdued. In our society, everything needs purpose, needs value and needs to contribute to tangible results. Play is condemned and waved away, hobbies need to get you somewhere, make someone happy or be shared on insta to harvest likes and recognition. 

When was the last time you saw a grown-up play, really play for the fun of it? Walking over a small ledge trying to keep their balance? Picking up some sticks to try and make a figure out of it, or just messing around in general? And if you were that special person that witnessed that grown-up play like a child, weren’t you frowning and judging their childish behavior?

What’s the use? What’s the use of play? 

I think we have collectively forgotten the use of play.

But aren’t the best artworks discoveries of play? Isn’t the best music coming from experimentation and frivolous play? Isn’t the best writing written by someone who still knows how to play with words, how to play with expression. Don’t we all recognize that being ourselves leads to our best version? Aren’t we all looking for ourselves, our own authenticity, who we are? Isn’t everything that is worthwhile in its essence the result of play?

We’re all so lost.

Could our ability to play and the fact that we lost that ability have anything to do with the fact that we also lost any sense of who we are? Isn’t the way to find ourselves led by our own curiosity? Isn’t play about testing, hypothesizing and experimenting? What if it is mindless? Isn’t that a step in meditation? Isn’t that about seeing where your mind takes you? Isn’t that a way towards yourself? 

And while I’m writing this I’m fully aware that what I’m sensing is my own disability to play and my own striving to make “useful” use of my time and my own lack of understanding of who I am. I know that I’m projecting outwards but I also think it holds the truth.

Play is not useless, it never became useless, but we’ve forgotten its purpose. We’ve downplayed and trivialized it as mere children’s pastime, as silliness and something to grow out of. 

Schools are not to blame – they are what we as society expect them to be. Teachers are not to blame as they too have grown out of play just like all of us. But schools make it obvious and tangible that play is not how you learn and that doing things “just because” is not acceptable. 

Anyone who’s been to any kind of art education will remember the following situation. You’ve back to being a student and in your first year, you have created something for an assignment, a piece of art, a design for a dress, a drawing, a layout for a magazine.. anything. And the professor or teacher comes up to you and asks, so.. Why did you make this? And if your answer would be anything like mine, it could be; “Just because…” or “I thought it was fun..” or “I felt like it..” and although those would be honest answers, none of those answers would be OK. 

How did that moment feel? It feels terrible, disappointing and unfair. It makes you feel angry and not taken seriously. Why does the teacher need a process? Why does the professor demand to see which steps took you from nothing to this artwork, design, layout? Why can’t she accept that it is beautiful by itself? Why is the result of play not enough? Why is there a need for the “blabla”?

Instead of acknowledging the work of the student, they insist on instilling a process. And although there is a lot of value in being aware of the process that led to the creation, the teacher totally forgoes the fact that there was a process – albeit one that was not documented and the student was not aware that there was a process – the student just played until a desired result was achieved. Every creation follows a process, there are rules that apply and there are requirements that are set by the student that playfully created their own designs, but they are simply unaware of them.

So too is the play of children, it follows rules that are created as they go, the rules are fluid and apply as long as they are fun or serve the purpose of play. Mindless play is a route of discovery and so natural to children, but so hard for adults. How fast our mind wonders of to a distraction or to self doubt about the time being wasted. It is hard to see play as productive, just as it once was hard to see a walk in a park as productive during a busy day at the office. 

Play is an essential tool, to find ourselves and to become the best that we can be. We just need to remember.. I just need to remember that.