The New York Times Magazine recently ran a long piece on the importance of "mature dramatic play" in young children. It centers around the notion of "executive function", which basically means one's ability to self-regulate one's skills. The new methodology called Tools of the Mind (based on the theories of Lev Vygotsky) is all about engaging school children in this "play" as a means to make them increase their executive function. In Tools of the Mind classrooms there are no gold stars, no timeouts and no "telling the class that they are all going to have to wait until Jimmy is quiet". For Vygotsky, a child's ability to play was a better gauge of her future academic success than any other indicator. During play a child must follow the rules of make-believe and encourage others to stick to the edicts of the fiction, developing self-control.
Some of the theory's wording is a little cringe-inducing in its ignoring of psychoanalytical theory's basic concepts. The whole "children must know how to master their thoughts" is a bit creepy in its disregard for the unconscious. If psychoanalysis has taught us anything is that, in fact, we can't "master" our thoughts. We can learn how to deal with them, but we can't bend the thoughts themselves into some kind of "executive functionality". Or can we?
Either way, it does bring about this business of having entertainment, work, play, play-work, pornography and art (along with their endless permutations) housed in the same console. "Executive function" will increasingly play (excuse the pun) a role in productivity because a mere click can make one go from the world of a Google Books version of Ulysses to FreeTrannyVideo.com. How to "manage" the desire to drop "mature play" and give in to "play play"? Which one is which? How to not let the time management battle between Ubu.com and World of Warcraft be an always already rigged one?
Vygotsky is a staple of constructivist learning folks in ed schools now, as well of several folks thinking about the interface between tech and learning. A Russian psychologist in the early 20th century, he developed ideas of 'proximal development' zones that have been taken up as we think of ways to scaffold student's self-motivated learning.
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