[Xmca-l] The Power of Play

[Douglas Williams]

Hi--

Hi--
I happened on the radio program To the Best of Our Knowledge, and the program put me in the mind of seeing what people on XMCA might have to say about the sections on books by Peter Grey, and by Ron Suskind.

Peter Grey is probably a known quantity to some of you. As someone who has been in and around classrooms for much of my life, both as a rebel and a structurer of classrooms, quite a lot of what he had to say struck sparks from my experience, and seemed interesting in relation to CHAT--particularly the idea of play as a medium of becoming a creative agent in one's own experience with the culture and perceptions one receives from the world.


Perhaps even more interesting is the interview with Ron Suskind, who found his autistic son had turned Disney films into a toolset through which he could structure communications with others in the world--something Donna Williams hinted at in Nobody Nowhere some years ago. The idea of turning memorized narratives and characters into mediums of communication and behavior mediation is old indeed--perhaps the traditional purpose of poetry in human culture. 

Both of these stories testify to the function of play as the means of taking control of externalized narratives, so that they serve both as a medium of interaction with the environment and a medium of creative agency and identity-creation. 


The Power of Play


 
   The Power of Play
Remember what it was like to be a kid, playing outside with friends for hours at a time? Sure, it may just seem like fun and games, but it may also have been ...  
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Regards,
Doug