Fun and Games: Childhood

Abstract

“Fun is often touted as an important component of modern childhood. It is represented as an inalienable right for children to have fun. The degree of fun we are supposed to have in childhood distinguishes this phase of life from all others. The range of ways in which fun is understood in childhood is wide and frequently contradictory. At one extreme we find the widely held belief that fun is an important pedagogic tool—through having fun and playing children tend to consolidate learning more effectively—at the other extreme fun is represented as something disruptive and in need of control. It is often the case that fun is regulated by spaces—some are appropriate to have fun in, others not, by time—there is a right time and a wrong time to have fun, or it is regulated by other people. Children have to learn the rules of fun if they are to have it without interference from adults. This process of training is never more apparent than in schooling. Since the 1960s the teaching of very young children has been underpinned by fun and discovery as core pedagogic principles. When the brain is at its most gymnastic and able—in early childhood—we acknowledge that fun is an extremely effective way of fixing learning and encouraging ‘learning by doing’. Associated with this is play, and, as will be explored later, play and fun are often synonymous in the minds of children in ways that are distinct from that in adults. However, as we progress through school the fun becomes marginalised and compartmentalised, as does the play. The fun has to make way for the serious stuff—but the serious stuff is actually not the content of learning but the style of learning. There are many ways to learn the same thing. As they progress through school years, children are coerced into understanding fun as something that does not occupy much of the day and that sober concentration is much more important. Whilst some may consider this an overly pessimistic picture of schooling, nobody that I have spoken to during the course of my thinking about fun has argued that their experiences were radically different. This is not to suggest that we are necessarily unhappy as a result of this sequestering of fun—just that it is interesting that it happens. Famously Ivan Illich (1971) suggested that this is another example of society imposing the values of traditional productive labour, control and deference upon generation after generation of youngsters, all being trained to behave themselves so as not to disrupt the power and privilege that dominates society. This process is not, of course, designed and maintained by identifiable and conscious individuals; rather, it becomes the way in which we do things—in much the way described by Norbert Elias in ‘The Civilizing Process’ (1939). As we get older the places and spaces in which we are allowed to have fun become fewer. We get hung up on the age appropriateness of fun and regulate our behaviour accordingly. A young woman I spoke to told me a story about how, when she was 13, she went on a trampoline and was having great fun until she noticed that some other children of about the same age were laughing at her. It transpired that they were giggling because bouncing on trampolines was something that younger children did. She never went on a trampoline again.” (Fincham, 2016, Chapter Summary on Website)