In response to Jay, I want to comment that play is also very serious
business. I observed many cases of preschoolers when plays (role functional
plays) are turned into fights. Of course, fights can be interpreted as
extremes of manifestation of "seriousness." I'm wondering if somebody did
a study of examining how serious or playful really children's plays are.
Eugene Matusov
UC Santa Cruz
PS I also have an impression that students back in Russia (oops, the former
USSR) had much more playful attitude to testing (which involved mastery of
cheating) than in American schools. The competition between teacher's
mastery of surveillance and students' mastery of cheating during the
classroom tests was one the most popular topics of children's socializing
with each other. As a former school teacher, I also remember often
discussions among teachers about new techniques for classroom surveillance
(e.g., watching the classroom through a mirror so students can't directly
track your look). The whole business was in part a play and in part quite
serious depending on prevalence of the official context in the situation
(e.g., a teacher could scold a child for caught cheating during the official
part of a teacher-parent meeting and then during inofficial talk with the
parent, the teacher could praise the child's wit admiring the child's
creative way of cheating, which would immediately bring the popular
teachers' theme of the student being "smart but lazy").
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Eugene Matusov
UC Santa Cruz