Of Play and Peace

Here's another contribution to our growing understanding of playfulness - a commentary by the evermore colleaguial Roger Greenaway. I quote it in its totality. Why post it in it's entirety again? The answer will be obvious momentarily:

"Today's playfulness message reminds me of something I was reading yesterday from the Praxis Peace Institute: '...peace requires an active and conscious co-creation process. It is not a passive state or a pause between wars; consequently, peace cannot take root in a passive environment.'

"The connection I make is that playfulness is not the absence of something like work, seriousness or depression (Brian Sutton-Smith's opposite of play) but is 'an active and conscious co-creation process.' Of course, the suppression of play can be equally conscious - in Roald Dahl's Matilda, the monstrous bullying teacher, Mrs. Trunchbull, says: 'Me a baby! How dare you! I was never a baby!'

"We have a culture in which the language of parents and teachers discourages play. I have been trying to do the opposite. One small step, as a teacher, was refusing to call 'recess', 'break' or 'interval' anything but 'playtime' - a word that most teenage children associate with primary school. At one of the first primary schools I visited as a student teacher all the teachers including (and especially) the headteacher would go out into the playground at playtime and play with the children. I thought this was the norm. Unfortunately it was just a wonderful exception!"