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 perception. 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 even worse when it is taken as the supposed children's language, and is used as an instrument for raising awareness 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 consciousness as well, making it opaque rather than sharp. The children could no longer know when a game is a game and when a game is a trap. Their intuition, 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 through the realm of education, the best possibility is to comprehend and organize catharsis. Since children's play is profoundly cathartic, this is much weightier than just a game; it is a 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 adult, dedicated only to the simplistic, due to its apparent uncontrollability. Perhaps unconsciously, due to limited contact with this quality, they fear that it carries an irrational element that must be countered with rationalisation, while it is reason itself that has engineered some of the major current crises, and the repression of the imagination is one of them. This explains why adults choose the ludic as a solution, for this idea protects them. In this situation, they can hide by pretending to play, but 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. Catharsis is hybrid, complex, and reverse. The ludic aims only to seek the positive, to try to determine a rule that supposedly can prevent abuse through rationalisation. 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 kind like a field for superficial
games; rather, it is compassionate and deeply immersed in complexity,
like life itself.
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 20 children aged 6 to 7, 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 each of them to talk about some
little animal they had seen, either in person or from anywhere else. Each one
of them then began their own performance, and within seconds there was an
eruption of 20 interpretations; for 45 minutes, everyone kept imitating their
little animal and maintaining a relationship with each other in the room. A quite
noisy, but totally harmonious experience, which would have been contained by a
normative intention, was directed towards the exhaustion of the possibilities
of manifesting their character.
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 awareness 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 resolutions 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 assumes inner problems can be solved by external action, 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 if catharsis does not solve all problems on its own—as the very essence of semiosis—no solution can be achieved without it. By incorporating the ludic into its own movements and freeing it from its mechanistic aspect, catharsis can equalize it, thereby integrating the adult and the child through the movement of 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 symbolic 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
