Huizinga’s chapter 2 is my favourite. words and languages (German in particular for some reason these days) are always fascinating. all the Greek and Latin is a little hard to get through since I don’t have that background (I imagine those were more common educational staples back in the 30s) but the whole idea that the ways we use words like “play” and “playful” and “game” and “sport” and all that is important. I don’t know if I’m smart enough to know what to do with that importance, but there is probably a lot to be done. this chapter of Homo Ludens is an example. it enlightens cultures for us, and almost starts to sort of map how play shows up differently and is embedded differently in different parts of the world. that we play games and play instruments but don’t play our voices… that’s interesting. but you can play a recording of someone singing. I think something in the word play seems to need at least some external dealing-with-the-world and dealing-with-others-ness. its connection to learning and rhetoric is in there too. it’s really cliche to say everything we do is some kind of game we play and modify as we go, but it’s true. and it’s helpful (if frustrating sometimes) to remember.

Good God, I’d forgotten how racist Huizinga was.

Yet, despite his infuriating ethnocentrism, I am fascinated by his idea of ritual and play inhabiting the same space. There is something about that magic circle, with its set rules and its separate-but-real existence that resonates in this space. It’s a strange leveling of the playing field that elevates play without necessarily diminishing the intent behind ritual. And that, I think, is the most interesting thing about Huizinga for me…the idea that play is far from frivolous. Irrational, yes, but not dismissible.

It’s a great argument for learning-through-play…with the small problem that, as Huizinga notes, you can’t be ordered to play. Play is an act of freedom, and playing by demand is only an imitation of the actual act. I suppose this is where classroom gamification (the grievously ineffective kind) comes into play. The mechanics of games and play aren’t enough. There has to be freedom to play, to be serious or not, and to fail without failing, as it were.

You know. Simple stuff.

Homo Ludens is unlike any of the other readings we have had so far this semester. The highly theoretical/philosophical/historical text is written quite well and took a lot of time to get through, but there were several chapters that I found interesting. Chapter 6, “Playing and Knowing” discusses the role of riddles and sophistic debate in relation to epistemology and play. I found it made several good points about not only Western thought (through the Germans and Greeks) but also through Eastern philosophy (through the Chinese and Indians).  Much like the rest of the book, the connections to play are deeply rooted in cultural practices and beliefs about competition and value (such as winning in a debate). Huizinga presents Aristotle and Empedocles as masters of debate, problems, and play as a part of paideia. I had never thought of their word PLAY and emphasis on wrestling (mental and physical exercise) as PLAY.  I could get behind this. Homo Ludens seems like  great read– I wish I had more time to dig into it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what Huizinga calls the “hazy border-line between play and seriousness” (52), and I’ve also been thinking about the fact that Huizinga argues that play, while not exactly the opposite of seriousness, may, at least, be defined as “non-seriousness” (5). I wonder what we might make of the idea that the “contrast between play and seriousness is always fluid” and the manner in which the fluid interplay between seriousness and play might speak to the ways we may use of both in our classrooms (8). What pedagogical role(s) might play have for us?

And then further, does the classroom space itself complicate the notion of play? I ask this because of what Huizinga argues regarding the idea of play as a “voluntary activity. Play to order is no longer play: it could at best be but a forcible imitation of it. By this quality of freedom alone, play marks itself off from the course of the natural process. It is something added there to and spread out over it like a flowering, an ornament, a garment” (7). So, if we integrate play into our classrooms, is it just a “forcible imitation of it”? Is it “play to order”? Is it no longer play?

I don’t really know how I feel about this, and I don’t know that I think that play in the classroom is no longer play. Maybe it’s something else. But if so, what is it? Or, I guess, is there a way to make use of play in the classroom in a way that allows it to still be play?

The second section got me pondering all these different words and connotations for play. English, despite its complex web of possible connotation, is sometimes not as pointed as other languages, which can offer very specific words for very specific feelings. I starting thinking, for instance, maybe we (read: “we” as “some people/general we”) don’t take the potential of video games seriously because play is the verb we use, as in, we play games. Maybe if it was engagement! But we take football seriously, and basketball, and all the things, despite playing them. And what’s wrong with play, anyway? It’s more active than watch, on the face, at least, or listen. So it’s not the word, then, or its connotation, but just the way we treat games. Fair, but what to do?

Something else that I wondered about while I was reading this was how many things in my life I’ve learned through play, and how much I’ve struggled when there’s no element of play — if I’m “playing” when I make many of my vehement margin notes, or if I get through things I’m not as interested in only because I set reward benchmarks that usually involve games or thinking about games. But I’m also wondering about play-in-work scenarios for others. This semester, I did offer some games as optional “readings” for my students, and many opted out, despite being gamers. Because it wasn’t their kinds of games, or because it doesn’t feel like work to them? I wonder about the latter because often when I tell students to just “play around with [something],” they resist. Work is straightforward, linear; play in that sense is not.

Really interested in hearing the discussion on this one.

I was pleasantly surprised by the articles this week. They were studies that supported what we largely knew (well, those of us who participate in online spaces) — that they seem to be fair(er) spaces than f2f ones. Thinking specifically about the Wolfe piece, I thought the results (approximately a 50/50 split in online discussion participation) (161) to reflect what I have seen on the dramaful WPA Listserve.

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the WPA-L, there is a gross lack of relevant topics and a obscene amount of tangential conversations. Most recently, a conversation about Native American topics in FYC became a discussion about trigger warnings and teacher rights. Interestingly, the discussion only included women. So they  were the ones responsible for taking the list off topic and for responding in somewhat aggressive responses.

This is not to say that the studies are wrong (they are very much so right) but analyzing their results in a discussion of f2f and online interactions amongst women could make them more interesting and relevant as more women enter (and take over?) online and f2f techy spaces.

Rickly posits, “If only a few voices are present, then the classroom becomes hierarchical in nature, with a few creating knowledge for the many” (125). How do we/can we deal with these hierarchies in our classrooms, especially when these hierarchies intersect with technology usage?

At the end of “Why Do Women Feel Ignored? Gender Differences in Computer-Mediated Classroom Interactions,” Wolfe concludes by asking the following questions: “Can women learn to respond to oppositions? Can men learn to agree more often and less egotistically? Perhaps, with enough effort, we can develop strategies for interacting online which leave no one feeling ignored” (164). How might we respond to such questions, and how might we begin to develop such strategies?

In “The Gender Gap in Computers and Composition Research: Must Boys Be Boys?”, Rickly wonders, “Do students really participate more consistently and interactively in the synchronous electronic forum than in traditional oral class discussions? And, how is gender a factor in these participation levels?” (124). How have our own classroom experiences spoken to the manner in which we might engage with such questions? How have we seen students’ participation levels play out in oral discussions and/or electronic ones? How do these levels converse with each other, and what conclusions might we draw from this? How have issues of gender come into play in these (oral and electronic) conversations in our classrooms?

There is freedom in rejecting a social belief in which we share no social purpose for believing; the exposure of how a particular belief is constructed by society and not by science is equally freeing – until you attempt to break away from that mold in a overly zealous crowd.

The rules for gender (and race) were established for clear purposes, to serve a particular society with a particular goal. And there’s no greater demonstration of these roles (rules) than in the classroom that is dominated primarily by white males. For a brief second, I thought perhaps my classrooms (the ones where I’m the teacher) were an exception to Rickly’s assertions. And then I remembered (Because I so often forget) that I’m a woman of color. Of course the women in my classroom and the male/female students of color feel comfortable speaking up orally and in online discussions. While the non-others remain silent. Is that a power trip? Who knows. Admittedly, I’m cautious when it comes to playing the race/gender card. Aren’t we as a society beyond that? Are 18 year olds really capable of race and gender discrimination? They’re kids. Their brains still have another growth spurt to manage. I then go home, frustrated, sad, disheartened, and discouraged as I remember the sly remarks, the refusals to participate, the need to find an area in which I’m not knowledgeable in to aggravate, the drastic differences in interactions and perceptions of credibility between an African American woman using spoken word to talk about being trilingual in English and a White British Male validating world Englishes. And I think I’ crazy until someone observing my class empathetically brings it up to me: do you notice the race and gender tensions in your class? And then I look in the mirror and imagine what it’d be like to teach as a white male.

And for shiggles, it turns out I’m masculine. According to the BSRI, I scored 84.167 out of 100 masculine points, 60.526 out of 100 feminine points, and 60 out of 100 androgynous (neutral) points.

Is there a race version of this?

what intrigues me more about these articles are their methods sections and the ways the authors frame their research. is this proof that I did learn something in Empirical last semester, maybe?

these two are similar studies. very quantitative, tons of graphs and tables. both Rickly and Wolfe point out gaps in current knowledge and propose small ways of beginning to fill those gaps. they both acknowledge some of the limitations of their approaches, and they are careful not to overgeneralize. they are small sample sizes, just single classrooms. Wolfe’s data supports some really interesting and subtle observations about how men and women converse. Rickly gets pretty fancy by including the BSRI measure as an alternative variable. because of the small sample sizes, who knows how generalizable those observations are. the value of this kind of writing research is sort of puzzling to me, for lots of reasons. the value of empirical research at all seems so arbitrary, so much of the time. dependent on ideologies and values and traditions and ethos and lots of other random stuff. I guess I can at least accept that this sort of work is as valuable as we decide it is. we do what we can with it, somehow. maybe it really does fill gaps in our understandings of the world…

less relatedly: I’m really curious after reading so many articles that mention it, what this Interchange system was like. google led me here: http://interchange.rtfm.info/index.html?id=WUbIWbGx
and then here: http://www.icdevgroup.org/i/dev/demo where apparently there is an online demo. but I’m not sure this is the same Interchange that our 1999 composition scholars have been talking about all this time. hmmm. still very curious.

I found Wolfe’s essay particularly interesting, considering her results seemed to contradict the perception that men tend to dominate conversations both off- and online. While the perception remains—and, indeed, women tended to be less argumentative and more likely to agree for the sake of moving the conversation along smoothly—there was a nearly even split in terms of both talking time and likelihood that someone would directly respond. I do have to wonder, however, if the subject matter being discussed had any effect on the study. In discussing something as traumatic and emotional as rape, I wonder if the men talked less because they felt less able to effectively talk about something so emotionally-charged and something that is seen to predominantly affect women. I am left to wonder what this study would look like with different topics of conversation. Maybe even a study that spans multiple class discussions, so as to normalize any affects that the discussion topic might have on the distribution of speakers. An analysis of a single discussion without any kind of control amounts to little more than an anecdote dressed up like empirical research. While I like the idea of the separate pilot study that Wolfe brings up in the conclusion, I would want to see a more robust version of this particular study first, considering the results are so interesting.