Wednesday 18 December 2013

Carpet Squares

Today I made modification to the shanty town; that is still going well on the playground. The shanty town itself is basically a very large wooden setting. Built of pallets, beams and other loose parts the children have slowly taken into it, it takes up a large space in the playground.
And so far it has gone down a treat, I spent a couple of days building it (while we were closed) so the children didn't see me building it. And have changed the basic design from the one I built last year. I focused more on actual dwellings in building last years shanty town but this year focused on it being more of a setting that could be moved through. The ground floor is full of twists and turns, dead ends and hidden entrances that I struggle to fit through and can never seem to navigate even though I built it(unlike the children). The first floor is a series of roof and walls, with a slope, beam bridges and trapdoors leading to the lower floor. And the second floor consists of various platforms that the children jump from at great height.
And of course the children are able to built, destroy, inhabit etc. this space to their hearts content.

I could speak about that for ages, and on modifications for even longer. But todays thought was on a much smaller modification I made to the setting as a whole. That being that as the weather made a turn for the worse and as the whole town is made of pallets they inevitably become quite slippery. And as many of them have become very well calibrated to the space and evermore daring when it comes to the jumps and gaps they traverse, I do not want them to fall from a height of ten feet at the lowest.
So my modification was to nail squares of carpet on the points where the children jumped from, and landed at. It worked well and I tested each jump and found that their was more than enough grip. But standing on one of the highest points I looked out at the shanty town and saw all these squares telling me where to jump and where to land. And I realised that in fact my modification was quite prescriptive and no doubt would influence where the children jumped and landed.
I stand firm in my opinion that it was necessary and right, the pallets were slippery and posed more of a danger than a risk. But nonetheless I'm aware that it was also prescriptive; despite the fact that the points where I hammered in these carpet squares were the points that I had observed children jumping and landing at the most.

It made me think that even though my modification managed the risk in the spaces most used. That it didn't nothing to add grip to the jump and land points that have not been used or found yet. No doubt the children will get bored of those gaps and will find, invent or create new ones. Yet I have done nothing to combat the slipperiness of those pallets yet to be jumped from and landed on.

It was a reminder that I can only respond to play as it is, not as what it will be or could be.

Sunday 15 December 2013

A Play Memory Re-visited

A moment I have been thinking about for quite a while was a couple of weeks ago on The Land. It was a day when a child was trying to throw foam on the fire and another, who I'll refer to as Jack was cursing like a witch. I had been playing with a third child with the wooden sword I'd found; he was cutting off my legs.
Jack had shouted me over to have a look at his leg after coming out of the office. I had a look at the bruise and asked him where he had hurt it. He told me it was in the shanty town (a big wooden den/maze/setting that I'll hopefully write about at some point) and then told me to follow him so he could show me where it was. He showed me and then we went separate ways and I carried on playing with the third child. But on the way there Jack noted that the old sandpit had gone. He asked where it had gone and told me that he'd liked playing in it when he used to come. I pointed out the other sandpit down the bottom and he started to reminisce about filling up buckets with sand and water.
Which leads me to twenty minutes later when Jack approached me again and told me to close my eyes. I had no idea what he was going to do or where he wanted to take me but I closed them anyway, fearful that he would just punch me in the nuts and run. He led me on the perilous journey from the top of the Land, down the hill, over the bridge and across the woodchip. He led me over a good beam and then told me to open my eyes.
We were standing at the sandpit down the bottom and after finding a shovel and bucket he began to re-enact his play memory with me by filling the bucket up with sand. I went to find another bucket to fill up with water so he could add that to the mixture. He poured the water in and I went to get more, always making the sure the mixture was wet but not drowning. I got some more and then we swapped, I began shovelling the sand into the bucket, which was big and black, and Jack went to get water.
When he came back the first child came over and asked what was going on, Jack explained and this child asked if he could join in. I found another shovel as the two both shifted sand and I went to get more water. This was all in about five minutes and then we found we had too much water, so I moved sand to catch up while the others decided how much water to add making the mixture right. Now the third child (who was a lot younger) came over and helped too and once full Jack wanted it all to go into the brook. I helped carry the bucket/tub out of the sandpit with the first child and they started putting it in.
 
By now I had begun removing myself from the play, The third child's presence had replaced me and the play had evolved. They continued to throw the sand into the brook and only when observing from a distance did I realise the significance of what I had been a part of.
 
That being, that in many other settings Jack, the first and the third child would have all been banned from the space. Jack for his swearing, The first child for trying to put foam in the fire and the third child for whacking staff with a wooden stick.
And had that been the case their play would never have been able to evolve and change and Jack would never have been able to re-visit that play memory that was birthed on the same space. The same play memory that acted as a play sun (which I'll also hopefully write about at some point) for both the first and third child.
It was nice to know that the setting had both created a play memory and allowed it to be re-visited, and that Jack wanted me to re-visit it with him was flattering.
 
And that's my pondering for today.

Friday 13 December 2013

Swearing

It is likely impossible that we will ever know the origins of spoken language, nor of the common dialects from which most of the world’s languages descend. It is equally unlikely that we will ever know when language was first adapted to a written form; the birth of reading and writing, of letters and literature.

The process itself of creating written language must have been an incredibly complex and testing one. To find a symbol for a sound, visualising thoughts in ways never before seen; logic suggests that the first written languages were compiled of mostly pictures, direct representations of what was being described. But again it is doubtful we will ever know.
What we do know though is this; the oldest known record of written language is of the ancient Sumerians and is around 5000 years old. And that whether spoken or written, language was a giant leap forward in the human ability to communicate with one another.
Think, as social animals it is imperative to our survival to be able to be social; naturally we are pack animals. Every day, in all aspects of life we communicate with one another, it may be verbally, written or through our body language and both insanity and depression have been documented as a result of prolonged seclusion from social interaction.
All three methods of communication are also evolving and always have been. It is theorised that the approximately 5000 languages spoken today all descended from around 20 languages and have been evolving since. The meaning of words also change, the most obvious example being gay, initially referring to a state of happiness now refers to sexual orientation. And on that note orientation used to mean, facing east. And words also fall out of use, pleb was a 19th century slanderous term used against the upper classes but now refers to fool, and I can’t remember the last time I heard someone say it in either context.

The argument I am getting around to is that swearing is just another form of communication. And even that is giving it too much credit; it isn’t another form of communication, words that are deemed “swear words” are just that, words. To swear once meant assuring seriousness to a cause and in its most intense referred to “swearing an oath”, the breaking of which could result in death. Yet now a “swear word” is a sound or written symbols or a form of body language that is seen as taboo.
But why? What makes a word a “swear word”, what turns that sound or symbol or action into taboo? Furthermore what is the outcome of preforming these taboos? And what is the difference between the word cunt and the word tree? Both are comprised of four symbols, each with their own sound, compiled together to make a distinct sound with distinct meanings. Breaking it down like that seems to make its taboo status trivial but its status remains just that; a taboo. But again I ask, why?

I place the blame on social constructs; those things that have only the meaning that we place on them (i.e. money). Yet such negativity towards an evolution of language does not come from an individual’s personal distaste. If I decided that seaweed was a “swear word” that would not make it so, even if the mention of it caused me offence. Just because I didn’t like it wouldn’t make it a “swear word”, my view on seaweed wouldn’t count for shit in the worldwide opinion of the stuff.
And I believe the reason is this, we are conditioned as children on the rights and wrongs of language. And that regardless of the evolution of language as we grow, we are taught and told as children what not to say. And this is done because our parents, teachers and other agents of socialisation are as susceptible as the rest of us to these social constructs.
And as my argument broadens the secret villain is revealed; society, culture and civilisation at large. Not in the Marxist sense that the bourgeoisie aim to stifle our proletarian expression or any such thing but that the outcome of civilisation and society is a large number of people striving for similar goals and who hold similar norms and values; to quote Agent K in Men in Black “A person is smart. People are dumb”.
I believe that swearing, or the taboo status of certain words, is a matter of consensus; and that society is dependent on consensus. If everyone had their own thoughts and ideas and pursued them in their own way there would be no society or culture. Think of teamwork, if four architects were tasked with drawing up a new corporate headquarters and they each had their own conflicting design, location and materials in mind, chances are the job wouldn’t get done.

Yet the kink in the great chain is this; that we all swear. We all do it, some more than others but that’s irrelevant, the point is everyone swears at one point or another. But if the consensus says that swearing is bad, why do we do it? Exactly because consensus says it’s bad, that’s why.

 So despite the fact that we all swear, it remains a value within society not to swear. And it remains a taboo due to this false value we all seem to place on it, even though it is simply an expression, a symbol, an evolutionary development in our ability to communicate with one another.
In terms of playwork that is why we should let children swear, as it is just a word, ultimately it means only what we decide it means. Furthermore this idea of false consensus, social construct, and individuality within society is not playful, they’re very much adult terms and adult values in the sense that no child has ever come up to me and wanted to talk about Marxism or social constructs.

 And as playworkers we acknowledge (or should have acknowledged) that the existence of our jobs is also an acknowledgment, an acknowledgement that there is a lack of adult free space in which children can play. Having acknowledged that we would by hypocritical to bring with us adult norms and values, such as don’t swear.