A Re-evaluation of the Ludic as a (Pedagogical) Tool
Fernando Henrique Catani, M.Ed.
It is believed that ethical motivation can be replaced by rationalist
examples, and it is not perceived that ethicality is already presupposed in
this intention. Thus, for example, when one intends to instil love for one's neighbour
in a child by describing to them, during breakfast, the work of the many people
thanks to whom it is now possible to enjoy food. It may be somewhat sad that
the child receives such perceptions of life only in a moral lesson. But this
exposure will only impress a child who already knows sympathy and love for
one's neighbour. And they will only experience these feelings in the community,
never in a moral lesson. (Walter Benjamin)
The language of the ludic is an adult categorisation. For the child, there is no such thing as the ludic in the adult's understanding; what they perceive as play is their reality, not a game. Only those who have stopped playing invent the distinction between reality and play, something a child has not done yet. This illusion, which reduces everything to regulation, becomes worrying when it is taken as the supposed children's language, and is used as an instrument for raising alertness of possible abuse. Eventually, this type of language is exactly what an abuser uses to convince a child that the abuse is not actually abuse. When the ludic is instrumentalised as a means of educating children against violence, this condition is somehow reinforced. And it is not difficult to recognize the danger of this abusive characteristic; this same discourse, strangely even appreciated by common sense, has long been observed in children's television programs and in the aggressive advertising campaigns of the toy industry. Thus, worse than being ineffective, the ludic proposal could be actively harmful. It does not develop their capacity for self-protection, but rather deteriorates it, slowing their instinctive reaction at the very moment it might be needed. And by using the same language as the abuser—the ambiguous dialect of ruse, secrecy, and fantasy—it reduces the child's intuition as well, making it opaque rather than sharp. The children could no longer know when a game is a game or when a game is a trap. Their perception, which should be their fastest defence, is replaced by a hesitation that the abuser at every level knows exactly how to exploit.
To develop protection against this particular form of violence within the educational sphere, the best possibility is to comprehend and facilitate catharsis. Since children's play is profoundly cathartic, it extends far beyond a mere symbolic facade; it constitutes a complex ritual of significations. In one way or another, this vital force will manifest itself, as it is intrinsic to human beings; therefore, it should not be regulated or repressed, but rather introduced in anticipation. For some adults, this phenomenon has been reduced to mere entertainment, for they have forgotten how cathartic actual play is. However, it is feared by the alienated adults dedicated only to the simplistic conventionalism, due to its apparent uncontrollability. Perhaps unconsciously, through a lack of contact with this quality, they fear that it carries an irrational element and react with rationalisation, but it is reason itself that has engineered some of the major current crises, and the repression of the imagination is one of them. Choosing the ludic as a solution, somehow they fell protected, and can hide by pretending to play, without getting emotionally involved and showing weakness, for the falseness of the fun is simulation, but children never simulate play as it is their very truth. Although catharsis is hybrid, complex, and reverse, the functionalised ludic aims only to seek the positive, attempting to determine a schematic tutorial that supposedly can prevent abuse. However, childhood experience is not yet based on rules but on intuitions, as the capacity to engage in self-recognition; while in the ludic, the gaze falls upon what is strange in the other. Whereas each person observes their own nature rather than the other's, a true resolution is achieved, since the ludic merely stimulates the false, while catharsis cultivates the true.
This dichotomy is like confusing compassion with kindness, for kindness is an act, but compassion is an expression which includes kindness. An act can be measured and controlled, but an expression always flows as a power that gives quality and balance to any action. Therefore, regarding compassion, it is not a Manichean opposition of giving or denying, but a commitment to always giving in the best way. Hence, for the architecture of such a complex feat, that is needed to intertwine the potential of children's play with the actions of a preventive and prospective education, the best space is the theatre—conceived here as pure theatre rooted in the tradition of actor’s preparation and day-to-day human formation, rather than a hollow, once-a-year elementary school performance on a mandatory date—a laboratory where the creative process unfolds and reinterprets the human experience itself. The theatrical environment is not ludic, nor is it a field of sophistry; rather, it is compassionate and deeply immersed in complexity, like life itself. By extension, catharsis should not be viewed merely as a momentary emotional outburst intended for venting, but rather as the continuous observation and expression of an extremely significant reality that can lead to a true calling—which is also a fundamental element in responding to the metastasis of the instrumentalised ludic within the current algorithmisation of living.
To illustrate, not in a case study but in a semiological testimony, what follows is a record describing a moment in which catharsis proved truer than any rule. On one occasion, for a class of approximately twenty children aged six to seven, an aesthetic education activity was to be proposed. The premise of the approach was always to begin by allowing the conflicts and convergences to surface that day; only then would something, through improvisation, be organised into a laboratory evoking the theatre's artistic process. Improvising becomes much richer when it is linked to the facts of an immediate reality, because it is not the absence of a theme; on the contrary, it is the absorption and expression of the context in its entirety. So, when the activity was still flourishing and the focus was on trying to figure out what topic might be most interesting, a little girl spoke about a puppy that impressed her and began to mimic it. This was the thread, the cue that prompted all of them to talk about some little animal they had seen, either in person or from elsewhere. Each one of them then began their own performance, and within seconds, there was an eruption of twenty interpretations; for forty-five minutes, everyone kept imitating their little animal and interacting with each other in the room. A quite noisy, but totally harmonious experience, which would have been contained by a normative intention, instead, was directed towards the exhaustion of the possibilities of manifesting their character in equilibrium.
This exercise showed that this phenomenon, long before being a loss of control, is the dimensioning of the possible. Furthermore, it does not necessarily require a rationalistically related theme to be worked on or manipulated as the ludic approach proposes, precisely because of its power to bring to light a theme relevant to an immediate reality. However, it is the movement of daily life and its experience that balances these possibilities, and it is what provokes this quality that will support the child’s own discernment of matters of significance, as this everyday life that generates alertness when it is freed from the imposition of rules, even when a need exists for those reliable and agreed ones. Although some over-excitement occurred on this occasion, this only happens the first time, for it is through the repetition of this activity that equilibrium and equanimity would arise, fostering understanding and the capacity for greater balance with each subsequent opportunity. It is anarchic; however, far from the misunderstanding of the term that accuses it of a lack of norms, it is the incorporation of a common agreement so profound that it transcends any imposed rules. Indeed, imposing an insoluble rational demand of excessive moral-information absorption upon the child is in itself an abuse. Broadly, the expectation that it is possible to incorporate all the rational tools of prevention through play increases their vulnerability, given that, in addition to historically being the defenceless target, they are also pressured to assume what, in fact, is the responsibility of a whole community and should never afflict them during their playtime. Thus, integrated and free children, as complete beings in themselves, do not need adjustments to cultivate their own consciousness and are much more capable of finding elements for their defence in their surroundings. They should not be expected to carry in their memory the entire burden of rules and morality that the illusion of the ludic proposal—which forces a semiotic confusion—attempts to instil.
The necessary critique of these reductionist models stems from the realisation that they are always rooted in the adult anxiety regarding control over the child. On the other hand, true understanding arises from the exaltation of a restructured scale that, through the archaeology of antecedents, weighs the actual compromised intentions of the models. Since publicising their immediate solutions generally conceals hypocrisy—which children instinctively recognise and, if left unaddressed, will either weaponise or suffer as a profound, silent disappointment—such a dynamic could ultimately overshadow honest relationships. This alienated idealisation, which disregards subjective specificities in favor of a homogenized and objective moralism, disqualifies the very instinctive elements capable of balancing disturbances, eventually exacerbating the problem itself. However, the issue is not just in the simplification itself, but in the ideological vice that avoids deep critical introspection, replacing it with a superficial self-criticism of customs. It is not, therefore, a matter of eliminating playfulness, but of recognising the only perspective capable of making it truly potent. Even though catharsis is not expected to resolve all ethical problems on its own—as the very essence of semiosis—it is plausible that no solution can be reached without the basis it can create. By incorporating the ludic into its own movements and freeing it from its mechanistic aspect, catharsis can equalise it, thereby integrating the adult and the child by reinforcing the realm of the imagination, through the same liberating dimension of consciousness. The so-called ludic approach lacks the power to demand the transformation of reality because, however exciting and sympathetic it may be, ontologically, it does not reach the stature of catharsis. The ludic aspect does not follow the verticality of the imaginary and, since its movement is restricted to a horizontal dimension, it ends up fostering only the superficiality of fantasy. Consequently, it is crucial not to adjectivise the children's life by reducing it to the specious ludic; on the contrary, they must be found as the subject of their own substantivisation, in their immanent catharsis.
Walter Benjamin, (2002). Reflections
on the Child, the Toy and Education. São Paulo:
Editora 34. p.16
