How Do Humor and Play Factor Into Education?
TLDR:
Humor and play transform education by infusing emotion into learning, strengthening memory, increasing engagement, and creating joyful, high-performing classrooms.
Humor and play are highly valuable in education. Are they absolutely necessary? No. But they’re extremely advantageous because when harnessed adeptly, they can produce effects that border magic. The ability to understand language, in contrast, is absolutely necessary. If we can’t communicate then we can’t exchange information, so nothing can be taught or learned, and everyone reinvents the wheel alone. The ability to communicate is absolutely necessary. What about well-crafted curriculum, a knowledgeable teacher, and nice school supplies? Are these absolutely necessary? Well, their usefulness is that they facilitate and accelerate the learning process and improve student experience, but strictly speaking, that process doesn’t have to be easy, and the experience doesn’t have to be beautiful, so such comforts aren’t absolutely necessary. With that said, however, were we to A/B split test two groups of students, one with these modern conveniences, and one without, the results would be galactically different. So, while not strictly necessary, these elements produce such a dramatic difference in outcome that for all intents and purposes they can be considered a fundamental necessity. They have a massive, positive effect on educational results. And so do laughter and play.
Emotions play a major role in the learning experience. Emotions or sets of emotions can be stimulated within us by a variety means, for instance something seen, heard, or felt in the physical world, or perhaps a thought or stirring memory from our own inner world. Regardless of their origins, these emotions in turn activate the amygdala, which processes emotions and tags experiences as emotionally significant. Kind of like color-coding or highlighting in the mind, or enriching data with metadata. The amygdala then interacts with the hippocampus downstream, which forms and consolidates memories, to enhance the encoding of those memories and improve their long-term storage. This infusion of emotion into the experience is the key to the enhanced results. In the same way, an infusion of emotion into the learning process ultimately helps students remember the material better and retain that information longer. And laughter is a particularly potent, beautiful expression of emotion.
Laughter is most powerful when it arises spontaneously, and the best way to generate spontaneous laughter is through play. Play is rich with emotion, especially competitive play, and most especially when there are serious stakes involved. Like candy. For instance, a trivia-style, time-pressured, end-of-unit review game with a truly coveted prize produces a vast spectrum of emotions in the student. Ups and downs, stress and relief, the thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat, all of which help the student remember the material more and more deeply. Furthermore, such gamification of learning, when done well, produces a curious effect: Because command of the material is a prerequisite to play the game well, students immediately focus their attention on comprehending that material. They understand that only thus will they be equipped to compete fiercely, so in a funny way, the learning itself becomes so fundamental that it becomes secondary. Knowledge becomes a means to an end, and the end is play. In the eyes of a child play is always the primary objective. “If I know this stuff really well, I can use it to play harder, beat my friends, and win candy.” Then when the dust of the game has settled, and everyone’s left in the afterglow of a spirited round of play, all that feeling-infused information has sunken deeply into their minds indeed.
Laughter can also arise spontaneously during instruction, and is in fact an indication of a healthy classroom culture. If a teacher or a student can make an appropriate, on-topic, well-timed joke, everyone can share in a good laugh along the way – and here we have emotion being infused into the learning experience again. Whatever topic, whatever datapoint was being discussed as the foundation of that joke will stick in the kids’ minds forever. Plus, such healthy ad hoc occurrences do wonders for student engagement and attention span, as each little positive incident reengages the class and resets focus. It’s a small break for the mind. Beyond all this, an atmosphere of good-natured humor is more relaxed, there’s less tension for the teacher and students alike, and in such a relaxed, comfortable state the mind can more effectively and efficiently absorb information. When students are comfortable, when silly guesses can be laughed off, when they’re happy to be in class, having a little fun, learning worthy material, the kids can rise to spectacular expectations. Engagement increases, comprehension increases, we see a higher frequency of intellectual risks which stimulate bursts of growth, and the best part is: most of the work feels like play.
Learning should be a positive, joyous experience, and laughter is one manifestation of a job well-done. Our emotions make our experiences more personal, and personal relevance increases both attention and retention. In fair balance, however, emotions can just as quickly cause a student to clam up so tightly that nothing can enter or escape. This is the antithesis of a good learning environment. Negative emotions can taint us to a topic, perhaps even one toward which we may have a natural proclivity if they’re intense enough. With this in mind, the best position to put ourselves in is humor without harm. We have to make everyone laugh, together, without anyone being left out – and no one is ever the butt of the joke. Our humor should be witty, relevant, and sharply-timed to produce the grandest effect. If everyone is included, and everyone gets it and laughs, then that little joke gains the potential to linger on as a lasting inside joke among that cohort of students. Such experiences are threads in the tapestry of a cohort’s culture and serve to make the experience happier and the memories more fondly recalled.
The last caveat to be addressed in a classroom full of humor, laughter, and play is of course classroom management. The degree to which we wish to be silly and playful is the degree to which we must organize our classroom and hold firm boundaries. Too many rules and no play is fascism but too much play and no rules is chaos. It’s upon the teacher to walk that fine line and shepherd their students through a beautiful learning experience. In our efforts toward such an effect, maintaining precious few, simple, carefully-formulated rules is a powerful tactic. Short phrases like, “It’s only funny once,” whenever a student tries repeating the same joke for the same laugh (which never works), or “Work first then play” whenever a student drifts off task, are memorable for students and easily repeated by teachers. The catchy consistency of such slogans also helps students feel like everyone is being treated equally, and such trust in the justice of classroom adds another layer safety and comfortability for the child.
Are humor, laughter, and play necessary in education? No. We can get by without them, like a life without art or music or entertainment, but the experience is certainly much duller and less enjoyable. Education without humor, laughter, or play produces lesser results, generates fewer beautiful memories, and contributes most unfortunately to a more pallid life. Life is full of problems and everyone has to work, but the goal is to have as much fun as we can along the way, the most beautiful experience we can muster. Analogously, a healthy, happy, high-performing classroom should be filled with little bursts of humor and laughter, small bouts of spontaneous, instructive play, balanced by sharply focused attention to well-crafted material and serious effort under a master teacher’s guidance. We have work to do, and that work will certainly be done, but just as certainly, we should have as much fun as we can along the way too.