The joy of true play

A few weeks ago, I sat with a former dance student, who interviewed me about challenges in teaching college classes.

Our conversation steered toward the notion of being boxed into a specific career, path, or personality.

I talked about how my students would sometimes tell me that they had too many readings, and they needed graphics instead because they had been told that they were “visual learners.”

People are supposedly visual, auditory, or kinesthetic, or what-have-you learners. Some people supposedly learn better using one sense or style versus another. However, little research has found the validity of using such notions to guide education. Worse, some educators use the concept to confine students into one kind of learning, rather than strategize methods for students to improve in the learning styles in which they are weak.

That is, a visual learner might be given more listening exercises to hone their listening skills so that they can also get better at learning through, say, lectures rather than diagrams or photos alone.

To be told, therefore, that one is a specific brand of learner is not to limit oneself to a single path or box, but to allow oneself to explore the paths that one is not used to. It was tiring, I told my student, to teach students who “stereotyped” themselves and, in so doing, lost their curiosity.

“Why do you think students play it safe?” She asked, “Is it their upbringing? Their school? Our generation?”

I’m paraphrasing her question; and my answer, also paraphrased, is that it’s a combination of many factors that can possibly feed into why students behave the way they do. Overprotective parents. Conventional teaching methods. Disengaged educators. A culture that prizes obedience.

However, I was bothered by the phrase “playing it safe.” I couldn’t understand why, not until last week, when my colleagues and I discussed the Sandbox program. The program, hosted by Ateneo’s Areté, is an initiative to encourage professionals across Ateneo to undertake interdisciplinary projects that can tackle wicked problems for specific communities.

The initiative, through its grant, has already given birth to innovative math teaching methods using our cultural heritage, a project that seeks to advance archaeological history by digging into our soils while telling the story of early Filipinos, and websites and apps that invite us to discover the richness of our dances and our wildlife.

My colleagues and I noticed, however, that researchers are often afraid to take risks. The grant encourages interdisciplinary teams to first engage directly with a specific group of people. To exercise empathy. To move outside one’s comfort zone. To discard preset notions. To play.

“Play” is the openness to the idea that one’s direct interactions with people and situations outside one’s boundaries can yield projects that stretch beyond a single discipline, that surpass the imagination of any one professional.

The grant encourages incubation: following direct engagement, researchers can then draw up prototypes for an intervention, which then undergoes multiple iterations. In every step, researchers have to face the possibility that their initial strategies will not work.

However, many researchers propose projects that already have an end in sight, with an aim to merely disseminate information, despite the researchers not having spoken with the community yet.

That was when I realized why “playing it safe” was so irritating.

“Playing it safe” is an oxymoron.

Play is openness to uncertainty, the temporality of plans, the fragility of preconceived notions. It’s the way we used to play, whether with dolls or cooking sets, LEGO bricks, or sketchpads. We didn’t have a routine, but we delighted in discovery, learning, and self-correction.

How can one claim to play, to be open to the discomfort of new things, when one sits, too comfortably, within one’s disciplinary, intellectual, or emotional fences?

It is an attitude that keeps many of our students from enjoying the learning process, but it is also an attitude that carries into their adulthood when they are taught that one’s path is already set for life, that uncertainty is to be feared, and play is dangerous—that one can learn through only one method, has a fixed personality measured by test scores, is of a generation whose characteristics should be adopted as permanent labels.

Play can be fruitful. I am proof of that. I was once a bench scientist who had to be open to the many paradigms of the social sciences. Today, I am a science and risk communication scholar drawing from the many disciplines that informed my careers. The multiple border crossings have allowed me to gain insight into varying problems, whether in education, politics, dance, or science.

There are many like me, who are forced into thinking about grades, personalities, or learning styles, but fight with their desire for learning.

They’re our kids.

And I hope our parents and teachers don’t allow test results to cripple them.

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iponcedeleon@ateneo.edu