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?