Why fun is important in learning

The author speaks of the lack of fun in educational research, but if you were to tour most classrooms, especially in urban districts, I think you would see a complete over-reliance on "fun" lessons over substantive lessons. Teachers too often confuse a fun lesson with a good lesson. Fun is good, but learning is the real reason students are there.

I speak from experience here. I started my career trying to make everything fun, but soon learned that the fun wasn't translating into the kind of achievement I was looking for. I'm afraid not enough teachers learn this lesson...

Recommend the following on this topic:

"Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience", Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (author and psychology professor from the University of Chicago).

This professor, who was a teenager during WWII and wondered why people stayed in certain miserable situations, based his research on enjoyment in life as opposed to suffering. He was intrigued by people who would play chess, climb mountains and create art for no other purpose than that they enjoyed it, and he spent many years studying people engaged in activities that the rest of the world regards as "fun". Fun is rather more complex than most of us think.

He makes a number fascinating points about happiness and enjoyment that are linked to learning, among them:

1. There is a distinct difference between pleasure and enjoyment: pleasure is of the moment and may not require skill; in the process of enjoyment,a certain amount of skill is required and growth can take place and continue.

2. Several criteria were necessary for enjoyment to ocurr: skills had to be at least matched for the task at hand, even for those things regarded as fun, or the person just became frustrated. I believe he goes into the element of challenge (it's been awhile since I read this book) -
that there has to be at least some challenge or the work is not interesting, but if the challenge is too high, again the
person becomes frustrated.

3. Periods of relaxation are important; if the brain is constantly in a work mode, the transition state in which the "aha" moments will occur do not happen.

Professor Csikszentmihali's work made many significant contributions to the understanding of creativity, regardless of the field.

The title of the book, "FLOW", refers to an
optimal mental state in which the person is so engaged that he/she loses track of time, caught up in the experience true enjoyment.

Unfortunately, pre-k funding is dwindling in many cities across the United States. Therefore, in order to help our children succeed; it is simply time for parents to step up to the plate. Parents can begin by reading aloud to their children daily. Twenty minutes a day will increase their vocabulary and comprehension. Books are free at the public libraries. Parents can purchase inexpensive educational CDs that teach alphabet sounds, vowel sounds, and much more.

Yes, pre-k for all children would be great…but in the mean time parents, let us do what we can to help our children succeed. Go to www.readtomeamerica.com and purchase “Teach Me How To Read…So I Can Succeed.” This CD promotes literacy and parental involvement. In addition, the CD is performed by children and is fun and upbeat. . Check out the web site and listen to the sample music. www.readtomeamerica.com

This is a straw man argument. In the real world, in DCPS, there is much more poorly executed "fun" in the classrooms than the author suggests. Come back to the real world and these columns will make sense, until then parents look at this and wonder where you get your data from.

I believe there is too much "Fun" in the classrooms that distracts from learning and not enough learning fun. Fun becomes a "break" from learning according to the teachers who don't seem to have the smarts to combine the two.

Seems everyone has a different definition of the word 'fun' and its easy to interpret it as being clownish or silly in the classroom. But as a parent, I'm looking for teachers and schools that encourage learning in a way that is creative, lively, and encouraging individuality. The author defined 'fun' in this educational context as meaning "engagement, doing and learning what has meaning and purpose, and it means being challenged." Call it what you want, but this is exactly how I'd hope my kids will be educated!

Fun implies that you are teaching the students to enjoy the subject you are teaching so that they will want to learn. Fun in this sense is not entertainment or silliness. It is enjoyment of the learning process. I think of it as what we used to call "enrichment" and now call "rigor".

This kind of fun takes a lot more time and skill to plan. Teachers also have to explain to the students why they are doing the activities they are doing in a "fun" way, because sometimes the students are not aware that they are learning in this way.

In practice, having students interact is not as easy as having them sitting quietly. There is more commotion. It takes a great deal of skill to run this kind of a classroom and sometimes kids can't handle it, so there has to be more structure.

I think some people think that this kind of engagement, rigor or fun, whatever you want to call it is a waste of time.

Celestun100: "This kind of fun takes a lot more time and skill to plan. Teachers also have to explain to the students why they are doing the activities they are doing in a "fun" way, because sometimes the students are not aware that they are learning in this way."

You are so right! However, if done correctly, no explanation will be needed. Students should be taught to make connections and draw conclusions from what is done in the classroom to other subjects or lessons. Typically a "fun" lesson can be used as a "hook" to reel them in for a more technical lesson later. Once you have them on board, it is easier to engage them in more drill type activities if necessary.

I have found over the years that students often do not have the will to stick to difficult tasks like they used to. Then tend to give up on things that they perceive as "hard." The fun gets them started and can be used at intervals to keep them going. Once they accomplish something they initially perceived as difficult they will feel a real sense of achievement.

Fun may have its place, but it certainly has its limitations. Just look at other walks of life. Pick up a musical instrument and just have "fun" with it. You may get good enough to amuse yourself, but unless you're Mozart you'll never play Carnegie Hall or even join a garage band unless you've got other compensating abilities.

How 'bout sports? Pick a sport like baseball and just have fun. Show up for games, but don't do anything else because games are where the fun and glory are. You'll likely never make it on a team that even remotely wants to win.

In both these cases, and many others, you need to spend MOST of your time doing things that aren't fun to get good at anything. An irony here is that the typical kid gets this FAR more than your typical education "expert".

Sure, you can give a group of little kids some magnets and paper clips and they'll learn something by having fun. But the edu-idiots expect that this "strategy" should continue throughout high school. Reading this article and some of these comments I'm not in the least surprised that I've had high school students who couldn't multiply by 10.

Oh, and I just love the re-definition of the word "rigor". Get a dictionary.

@physicsteacher

I know what rigor means. The new definition is educational jargon. I don't like it either.

My subject is foreign language and part of that is to teach kids to speak in the target language. The kids speak to each other for practice and they think it is fun. It doesn't mean that is all they do and it is difficult, often more difficult than reading or writing. (Which they also do)

Most of these comments seem to assume that working hard at something can't be fun. This is just the same attitude Mr. Slade criticized--that if students are enjoying schoolwork they must not be learning anything.

And by the way, physicsteacher, what's wrong with just only being "good enough to amuse yourself" with a musical instrument? Or with just playing a game for the fun of moving without caring who won? Part of the problems with students is we have taught them that if they are not good enough or interested enough to be tops in the field they shouldn't bother.

While it is possible to see fun in classrooms that does not directly lead to learning, it is also possible to see non-fun classroom activities that don't work, either. Certainly, activities need to be about more than fun in order to be effective. They can and should be planned to engage students in direct, authentic fun lessons that focus on grade level skills. In logical terms, fun by itself may be "necessary" (which I agree it is) but it is not "necessary and sufficient." Perhaps we should call it something else, such as "focused fun," or "skill-based fun."

I am so intrigued by the comments that I had to post one in support of adding more fun to education. For years I have been using fun games and hands-on activities to introduce new concepts in my elementary classes. The students then apply the new material to “rigorous” real-work projects that are rich with opportunities for cognitive and social/emotional learning. These multifaceted projects are completely standards-based and tend to make regular subjects like Social Studies, Mathematics and English Language Arts more relevant for students. I have been using this approach for over 10 years and have consistently found the engagement level to be very high for all types of learners including special needs, gifted, behaviorally-challenged and autistic.

I agree with the comments that this approach can actually require more work from the teacher. It really helps to find resources packages that make it easy to incorporate experiential learning into the classroom. PowerPlay Young Entrepreneurs is definitely a favorite with my students. Check out this video and you’ll see the impact that fun can have on a classroom: http://powerplay4success.com/page217.htm.

I love this discussion, having been a long-time advocate of that vile three-letter word, "FUN," in the context of school. As the artist who wrote above about FLOW, we need to think about "fun" not as a separate entity/emotion that we apply as needed to spice up the classroom, but rather as an approach to learning that can turn the most important ideas into an enjoyable experience. We're not talking about teachers in clown suits here, and I'm pretty tired of, as Slade points out, the Puritan ethic that equates fun with evil. If we refuse to allow laughter, movement, discussion, enjoyment into our classrooms because their contribution to learning cannot be "measured," then we are missing the point of 40 years of brain research. Connections, insights, participation, and engagement are ALL inspired by enjoyment.

So, here's the rub: When are we going to stop imagining that having kids learn to fill in the correct bubbles on a standardized test really measures anything worthwhile? When are we going to stop running our schools for the "bottom line" and do it for the good of the kids (and the teachers and the parents, who are all caught in a huge, lucrative machine)? What we need to do is carry on, inspire and excite the natural love of learning that ALL kids have ALL the way through their K-12 experience: At the teen level, an exciting discussion can be FUN! A new idea can be FUN! An interesting perspective from another student can be FUN! Thanks for this blog, Valerie, and for uncovering yet another common sense approach to learning that all of us out here on the ground know is true! Patricia Kokinos, www.ChangeTheSchools.com

When the content is boring I will add fun educational games to the material to help the kids engage with it.