Why Play ?

I am into pondering, creating and playing with possibilities

I am a child

aren't we all!

 I have set up a consultancy course to train professionals (Teachers, Social Workers, Therapists nurses and doctors) on the value of play.   There are clearly dramatical increases in the quality of life.  These  sessions have been recorded over the past 5 years. Some of those “players” wish to go further and teach others the transformational effects of play.    Each “player” is trained individually, because no two people learn  (play) in the same way.  Play is a metamodel – it is open ended, and does not respond to closed systems of learning (work for example is a model and not a metamodel)  You cannot work your way into the other “player”, one has to play ones way into the other player, and to inspire is definitely a key, it is inspirational and a hell of a lot of fun to play yourself into a new way of life, and this  is still the tip of the iceberg.

 Play has been completly underestimated and undervalued throughout every aspect of society,religious,social,political,philisophical, and intellectual.

 It is still a relatively new phenomenon which is being researched  And those who have in the past researched it, such as psychologists, have used it basically to justify their  own personal theories on cognitive development, how one learns and thinks, practically reducing play to a sideline and a preoccupation only for children. 

The stigma and taboo of play needs to be adressed.

Play is why we are here

Human beings are playing.

If you dont know how to play,you will never learn anything new.  Take for example the theories from Gardener regarding the 7 intelligences,  I am astonished he has not realised about play. For me Play is the metamodel to all models of learning (intelligence). The glue which glues them all together. If you cannot play there is no quality learning. Playing is the best way to learn, and the only way where you feel good about what you learn.  And any way what is all this focus on learning. Learning is just a side effect of play.

I remember a 40 minute telephone discussion with  the director  of Lego Dacta in Billund, Denmark, (he was the second director to phone me up, the first was Jørgen Bruhn a year earlier, (after he read my letter to the Company sharing my ideas about human consciousness,) who invited me out to Lego to give a lecture to the human resource dept.  Jørgen also asked me to get in touch with and read a book by Professor Segmour Pabert of M.I.T in America, the brilliant mathematician who wrote the book “Mindstorms” , the book and professor behind Lego robotics. (Who coincidently also worked with Piaget( the famous Child psychologist) in Switzerland.)  Jørgen meant my thinking and ideas were the same as Paberts.  I was surprised to say the least, I was arguing that play was a metamodel, and  more than learning.   The director I was now speaking to though was more for  the latest research from Japan; that play was a part of learning and that I could not argue that play was more than learning.  Eventually, after explaining to him the concepts of metamodels and his own product Lego he shifted his thinking to -  play and learning are the same.

It was at this point where I pointed out to him that if what he was saying was true, then why do we have schools.  Anyway play and learning are not the same.  Play is a process, learning is a product

They may sit on the same table like salt and pepper, but nobody is going to convince me that salt is pepper.

James Findlay  home