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 a child, there is no such thing as the ludic in the adult's understanding; what they perceive as playing 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 the ludic is taken as the supposed child's language, and is used as an instrument for raising awareness of possible abuse. Ultimately, the language of the ludic is exactly what the abuser uses to convince the 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 of the ludic language; 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. Imposing an insoluble rational demand on the child is in itself an abuse. 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 language of ruse, secrecy, and fantasy—it dilutes the child's consciousness as well, making it opaque rather than sharp. The child 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 violence, the best possibility is to organize the catharsis. Because children's play is a catharsis that is much more profound than just a game; it is a ritual of significations and not just funny moments. For some adults, this phenomenon has been reduced to mere entertainment, because they have forgotten how cathartic actual play is. However, catharsis is feared by the alienated adult, dedicated only to the simplistic, because this seems uncontrollable. Perhaps unconsciously, due to limited contact with this quality, they fear that catharsis carries an irrational element that must be countered with rationalization, while it is reason itself that has engineered some of the major current crises, and the repression of the imagination is one of them. That's why adults choose the ludic as a solution, because this idea protects them. In this situation, they can hide by pretending to play, but without getting emotionally involved as they would when there is catharsis. If they choose catharsis, they risk showing their hypocrisy, because the falseness of the fun is simulation, but the child never simulates play because 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 rationalization. However, childhood experience is not yet based on rules but on intuitions. In catharsis, the capacity worked on is that of 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, because the ludic merely stimulates the false, while catharsis cultivates the true.
By extension, catharsis should not be viewed
as a momentary emotional outburst to vent, but rather as a constant observation
and expression of an extremely significant reality that can lead to a true
calling. The dichotomy between the ludic and catharsis is like confusing
compassion with kindness. 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 continuous human formation, rather than a void,
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 creative process is not ludic, nor is it kind like superficial
games; rather, it is compassionate and very cathartic, 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, in an elementary school for
a class of approximately 20 children aged 6 to 7, an aesthetic education
activity was to be organised. The premise of the approach was always to begin
by allowing the conflicts and convergences of the group to surface that day; only
then would something be proposed and, through improvisation, be organised into
an activity 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 the phenomenon of catharsis, long before being a loss of control, is the dimensioning of the possible. Furthermore, it does not necessarily require a rationally related theme to be worked on or manipulated as playfulness 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 things that are important, precisely because this everyday life generates awareness 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 dispenses with its determination. Indeed, it is an abuse in itself to expect a child to incorporate all the rational tools of defence through play; actually, this defensiveness is the responsibility of a community, for the child's experience is complete in itself. Thus, an integrated and free child cultivating their own consciousness is much more capable of finding elements of 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 for these reductionist models stems from the realization 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 each of them that publicizes an immediate solution generally conceals hypocrisy. Such alienated idealization of inner problems being solved by action from the outside in, by disqualifying precisely those instinctive elements capable of balancing any disturbance, ends up exacerbating the problem itself. However, the problem 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 that the ludic can offer, but of recognizing that catharsis itself is the only perspective capable of making it truly potent. By incorporating it into its own movements and freeing it from its mechanistic aspect, catharsis can equalize it, while integrating the adult and the child through the movement of imagination, through the same liberating dimension of consciousness. The so-called specious 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 adjectivize the children's life by reducing it to the ludic; on the contrary, they must be found as the subject of their own substantivation, in their immanent catharsis.
Walter Benjamin, (2002). Reflections
on the Child, the Toy and Education. São Paulo:
Editora 34. p.16
