Keith Crome - Education as Child’s Play

<p>Season Four of British Society for Phenomenology Podcast concludes with one of the keynotes from our 2019 Annual Conference. Keith Crome is Principal Lecturer in Philosophy, and Education Lead for the Department of History, Politics and Philosophy, Manchester Metropolitan University; as well as the BSP Impact Director. </p> <p> </p> <p>ABSTRACT: While schooling is a serious business, and education requires discipline, we are often told by educationalists, and also by our students, to make learning fun. There is an obvious extrinsic justification for doing this. As John Dewey noted a century ago in Democracy and Education (1916), experience has shown that allowing pupils to play makes going to school a joy — or at least provides relief from the tedium and strain of regular school work — and management less of a burden. Nevertheless, the link between education and play, familiar to us all (who hasn’t learnt by playing?), is fundamental. The aim of this talk is to explore this connection and its implications for a radical conception of education. I will begin with the contention that the originary co-belonging of play and education has been obscured by the rise of homo faber and the animal laborans, and the attendant overpowering of homo ludens. I will argue that a failure to recognise this vitiates Dewey’s celebrated pragmatist account of education. I will attempt to suggest that it is possible to think beyond the horizon of Dewey’s work by following Eugen Fink in conceiving the phenomenon of play as a mode of activity irreducible to either praxis and poiesis. Such a conception permits us to return to and rethink the originary correspondence between education and play as it was recognised by the Ancient Greeks.</p> <p> </p> <p>BIO: Dr Keith Crome is Principal Lecturer in Philosophy and Education Lead for the Department of History, Politics and Philosophy at Manchester Metropolitan University. He served as President of the British Society for Phenomenology from 2014 - 2018, and is currently a member of th