what makes us play? what makes us learn?

O P E N F I L E

Play in education (II): Attitudes and trends

I

What makes us play? What makes us learn?

Martine Mauriras Bousquet

It is well known that play and school have rarely got on well together. 'There is a time for everything: a time for play and a time for work', 'We are not here to enjoy ourselves'--these are the sort of maxims which schoolchildren have been accustomed to hearing for a long time. Those involved with education-teachers and parentsmhave accepted the complementarity of school work and play with varying amounts of good grace. In the vast majority of cases, however, they have not yet understood that they can be one and the same thing, and have thought that playtime meant less time for work. That, in the children's view, amounted to saying that time spent on work meant less time for play.

However, the greatest educational specialists--from Plato to Schiller and from Comenius to Rousseau--constantly stated that, for children, play was the best way of learning. One might well ask, then, why there is this gap between words and deeds. Our argument here is that those concerned with the theory and practice of education do not speak the same language. For theoreticians, play is a state of mind which should pervade the whole of education, whereas for practitioners, too often play is encapsulated in what are known as educational games. What we wish to demonstrate here is that the concept of 'educational games' is an artificial notion which distorts thinking on

Martine Mauriras Bousquet (France). Works in the Education Sector at Unesco. Go-author of The Child and Play (Unesco, z979), author of Th6orie et pratique ludiques (Paris, z984) as well as several articles on play and the new teaching techniques.

this subject and thus prevents any progress being made with a genuine educational policy of play.

Can we learn without playing or play without learning?

The expression 'educational game' is incorrect because it suggests the quite false idea that we can learn when feeling bored or play without learning anything. However, a closer look will reveal that there is no such thing as a good game (or a game which we let ourselves be drawn into) which teaches nothing and that there is no such thing as good learning exercises (good, meaning effective) which have no element of play in them. In the same way, a good toy (which gets played with) always teaches something and, in the final analysis, good teaching aids are in some way toys.

First of all, many games without an 'educational' label are nonetheless excellent learning aids. Scrabble and crossword puzzles are good for the vocabulary and spelling; dice, dominoes, the different types of backgammon ('nard' or 'shwan-liu') exercise counting skills; puzzles, chess, draughts or the 'yotC, Rubik's cube, 'Master Mind', African or Asian waris, 1 provide training in logic; nearly all card games exercise the memory and the powers of deduction, poker is an exercise in empathy, etc. The old Chinese game of 'fan-tan', which the Americans call 'Nim's game', resembles a problem of Boolean algebra, and the envelope game is a transposition of the famous problem of Euler's 'bridges of Pregel', the basis of topology. The same holds good for all games, even the most childish.

Prospects~ Vol. XVI~ No. 4, 1986

466 Martine Mauriras Bousquet

'There is no such thing', a specialist in educational games has said, 'as a game for entertainment which teaches nothing', a The game of snakes-and-ladders contains shrewd civic, moral or religious lessons and the same is true for hopscotch. The game of 'spot the difference', based on comparisons and similarities, pro- vides an excellent introduction to argument by analogy, which is one of the bases of modern mathematics; charades, riddles and enigmas teach people to move from one line of thinking to another; tig, puss-in-the-corner, prisoners' base are exercises in alertness; team sports develop the spirit of co-operation, and the games that R. Caillois called 'vertigo' games, and which I shall call games of pleasure in taking risks, teach courage. In fact, to the extent that a game is a good one, that it awakens and maintains interest and makes people want to play, it is also a good educational exercise. However, while all (good) games do teach something, what they teach is not necessarily one of the subjects in the young player's school curriculum. Games are always instruc- tive, in one way or another, but they are rarely didactic.

On the other hand, a good educational exercise---an exercise which gets people to learn--is always akin to play. It is true that a pupil who 'dries up' when writing an essay or who cannot understand an arithmetic problem does not find this at all pleasant, but when ideas flood in or when the solution comes in sight, the child then has the same sort of feeling as when he finishes a game. Trying to learn and not succeeding is a grind, but learning, dis- covering, creating, is playing. It is therefore extremely difficult to draw a precise boundary between the exercises in a textbook of modern mathematics and the games in a collection of 'mathematical fun'. The only difference is in the order of presentation. Textbooks follow the order set out in the curriculum whereas collections of games are usually less systematic. Precisely the same thing applies in the best science books, and one would be hard put to decide where instruction begins and games end in the introduction to modern-science series

by George Gamow, winner of the Unesco, Kalinga Prize for the Popularization of Science.S In fact, games and instruction are inextricably mingled in it because science was a game for Gamow, as it was for his friend Einstein.' Similarly, primary-school natural history and history textbooks are less and less distinguish- able from leisure books on the same subjects. This is all to the credit of the publishers and educational authorities who have at last understood that boredom is not a necessary part of learning and that it is possible to be entertaining without necessarily presenting things falsely or in a stupid way.

The same applies to toys. It is acknowledged today that all children's toys are educational since they enhance the child's environment and get him to be active, thus advancing their sensor-motor development, his discovery and structuring of the environment and the co- ordination of schemas. It therefore has to be asked why and how the toys which play such an important role in the child's learning processes cease to be of educational value at a certain point. This does not happen only when they cease to be just toys and become objects of prestige, things to possess or collect. They are often in danger of no longer being educational when they try too hard to be so, as with the 'Little Chemist', 'Little Physicist' or 'Little Naturalist' outfits which shops offer at Christmastime in the developed countries. They are obviously aids to learning and for that reason they lose their entertainment value, thus providing no further incentive to study. It is probably far easier to teach physics, as E. Haase tried to do, from an observation of traditional games with marbles, balls, peashooters, whistles and reed pipes, soap bubbles, tops, etc. s In fact, the concept of the toy is even harder to pin down than that of the game. The toy is no more than a prop for the game and, in the same way that any activity can be a game, 'any object can be transformed into a t o y ' . 6 Young chim- panzees find it far more fun to play with their in- structor's belongings (watch, pen, camera) than with their own 'toys', and children's behaviour is no different. Thus, just as a classroom exer-

What makes us play? What makes us learn? 467

cise may quite well be performed as a game, learning aids are often considered as toys. For the young pupil, the satchel, box of crayons, exercise books and bright new textbooks, at least at the beginning of the school year, are far closer to toys than to working instruments. l~Iothing could be more natural, for if it is accepted that true learning is a game, it is only right that the instruments of learning should be toys. The school's television set, video recorder, microcomputer, science laboratory, collection of rocks or fossils are also toys for the pupil, to start off with, at any rate, and when they no longer seem like toys to him, he loses interest in them and also stops learning from them. This is not in the least surprising, and adults, i f they take a look at themselves, will realize that the majority of the allegedly functional objects which they surround themselves with--clothes, household appliances, hi- fi equipment and car--are, for the most part, toys.

The example of computerized games and CAI

Computer-assisted instruction (CAI), which is very popular at present, illustrates how difficult it is, in an overall operation to distinguish instruction from play, the educational material from the toy, and the toy from the so-called educational game.

In I985, the Centre d'l~.tudes des Syst~mes et des Technologies Avanc6es (CESTA) published a catalogue of educational and training software available in French3 The various subjects are in different sections (languages, French, mathematics, and so on), plus a section on 'educational games'. It is rather difficult to see what criteria were used to classify a given program in the 'games' section or in any other section. The authors of the catalogue were probably just as perplexed, since many of the exercises listed in the 'subject' sections are described at some stage specifically as games. Furthermore, some programs are referred to in both the 'games' section and in one of the

'subject' sections. 8 The same uncertainty is to be found in nearly all catalogues of educational software and the word 'game' is found in then time and again2 Many educators have obviously come to equate 'games' with exercises on computers.

Curiously enough, however, the reverse is also true and many programs that are described as purely recreational are in fact educational games. This is true, for example, of Richard Mateosian's excellent publication on program- ruing games in Basic. 1~ The majority of the games described are exercises in arithmetic (build-up to the four operations), in modern mathematics (graphs), in logic (finding the rules followed in the programme) and so on. The same applies to many collections of computer games, it

This means that in the minds of specialists in this pace-setting sector of information science, games and learning have become com- patible. It would nevertheless be interesting to know what the users (i.e. the children) think. Young schoolchildren are attracted by CAI from the beginning, because they thlnk---quite wrongly--that it is a sort of vedeo-game, u They soon learn better, for it is very often the case that the so-caUed educational computer games have no particular element of play in them. The exercises in Basic--to which CAI is still restricted in most cases--are in fact, at best, automated programmed instruction and are usually a mere aid to repetition or the checking of knowledge. There is nothing par- ticularly amusing in that, or indeed is there anything likely to arouse much interest. The child's attention will be caught not by any particular educational program called an 'educational game' (though there are in fact some excellent ones) so much as by the toy, that is, the computer and, subsequently, by computer science itself. The child plays around with the keys, and words, images and sound appear. The computer is the original magic object and children take enormous pleasure in seeing how much power they can wield. As in science fiction films and cartoons, they are 'supermen' with fantastic weapons. With practice, however,


the game becomes more subtle. In particular, if Logo language and not only Basic language is available, children can talk to the machine. They learn to bend to their will and to shape according to their wishes the images and words which appear on the screen. They see their ideas taking shape on the screen according to the instructions they give to the machine.

In this way, children can make the Logo 'tortoise' (symbolized by a small triangle of light) move across the screen in such a way as to draw a geometrical figure not with a lever, mouse or 'joystick', but with their own minds by giving logical orders corresponding to the shape they want and its size. For a square with sides measuring Io paces each, for example, they will tap on the keyboard 'left 9o' and the tortoise-triangle will pivot 90 degrees to the left, then 'forward IO' and the tortoise will move forward io paces, and so on four times running. G. M. B6cherraz and A. Graber have written on this subiect:

In fact, Logo has the advantage of awakening the child's inteUigence by forcing it to analyse its thinking processes, for example, in drawing a square: Learning to learn to draw a square as it were. Processes which usually unfold in the depths of the conscious mind emerge when using Logo. x8

As these same authors point out quite correctly, this language, which is such a powerful aid to learning in the true meaning of the word, 'is used like a game', 1. because it is constantly making calls on the player's initiative.

With Logo, pupils do more than simply reply to the computer, they take the first steps in programming. The real computer game in fact is programming and pupils in the final years of primary and secondary schools in a number of countries are working on this already. 15 In preparing small programs--of 'games' for example--in Basic (the easiest language), children discover the possibility of making the very structure of their minds objective by means of a logical series of instructions. With 'Go to', they build magic loops into the programme; with ' I f . . . then', they foresee decisions by the unknown user and react to them in

advance; with ' F o r . . . to next', they, as it were, 'hear' the computer repeat the lessons which they had taught it previously, is I f Logo is available and the children wish to draw a square, they no longer need to repeat the same instructions four times but can make up a smaU programme: 'For a square--repeat 4 (left 9o forward Io)--end' . With this in mind, the instructions of the French Ministry of Edu- cation, dated z4 March x983, state that 'the point here is to awaken children to algorithmic thought, to make them understand what a program is, to make them make programs (in a small way, naturally, a t first but real programs)'. The computer, therefore, is far more than a teaching machine or an automatic tutor. It is an 'object to think with '17 and such an obiect, to the extent that it helps us to think and frees the mind, makes us play.

The shared force of playing and learning

It is worth asking whether there is something particular i n an (educational) game which makes us play, and through play makes us learn~ The obvious feature of games in general is a mixture of repetition and surprise. This holds good for a game ofpuss-in-the-corner--in which the waiting sends us to sleep and at the same time makes us keenly attentive until an abrupt change of places by two players breaks the hush--as much as for a piece of music in which a simple and prolonged rhythm creates the 'background' against which the theme will stand out. It is true for tennis or football (comparatively monotonous exchanges broken by a sudden stroke or an attack), for a detective story or film (where it is called 'suspense'), or for a game of draughts or whist. Thus an educational game should lead the players' minds on by easy and regular stages (routine of questions and answers, exchange and alternation), hold their interest and sharpen is through the introduction, here and there, of a few unexpected ingredients and take advantage of the animation created in this


way to engage them confidently and enthusi- astically, in what is at one and the same time the surprise, the pleasure and the difficulty of discovery.

The whole art of the creator of games is finding the right proportion of repetition and surprise. This is by no means easy and there is no game that is right for everyone and for all occasions. A tremendous novelty enormously stimulating for some people will discourage others. Continuous repetition, reassuring to one person, will bore another. This is because the game, above all, is the business of the player. Educational games are things with which we play/learn. However, playing is wanting to play, and this wish, this desire, though it may not be absolutely gratuitous, is at least highly personal. It originates in the player, and nothing that comes from outside can be sure to produce it,

Outside stimuli can, of course, bring the idea of play to mind. Thus a game that we have already played several times evokes in us, by a Pavlovian reflex, the image of play. This is also why children are so keen on traditional games which are loaded with the pleasure of previous generations. The creators of educational games are fully aware of this, and do all they can to make their products look like games. One could almost say that an educational game was something that resembled a game. First of all, the title is often enticing and borrows rather heavily from what adults, rightly or wrongly, imagine the child's way of thinking about or seeing the world to be--which very often amounts to nothing more than the false way in which adults feel they have to speak to children. The scenario or production also attempts to pander to what is supposed to be the imagination or the weaknesses of children, for example, animals in human form or human beings disguised as animals, fairy stories, science fiction, sportsmen, policemen or soldiers as supermen. All of these are in fact not the creation of a child's world as such but form a subculture which, for the most part, has been developed by adults. This can be clearly seen from the educational toys on the market. The wrappings are the main thing

and the box is richly decorated and four times bigger than its contents.

Whether traditional, commercial or created by the teacher, the educational game is a publicity object which tries to make a study topic attractive. Publicity cannot do everything, however. In the final analysis, the main motiv- ation is still the desire to play. A common error made by too many educationists specializing in play and toys is to think that an object-- a game or a toy--can of itself make children play. All activities and all objects may lead to playing/learning, but none can guarantee that the child will play. Children play as they please, at what they please, when they please. Exactly the same thing applies to learning. Although pupils can be made to do a piece of schoolwork, they have not necessarily been made to learn anything as well. Learning, like playing, is something people choose to do.

The teacher as the moving spirit of the game

Since learning is a game, many people have thought that it should be possible to teach by means of games. There are two different misunderstandings here. First of all, games do not automatically lead to play (and, correla- tively, learning) and, secondly, learning and teaching are two different processes which are certainly linked but not identical. Play does not lend itself to teaching and games do not guarantee learning. We are in a dilemma, since if children are left to play as they please, they do not learn what we want them to. I f we interfere in their game by giving it an objective, we spoil the game and the children stop learning. Comoe-Krou has expressed this very clearly: 'Play cannot be manipulated, for it does not train the child for any particular task but is aimed at the overall development of the human being, us

Teachers have usually preferred games to play because they were not seeking just any development for the child but development in a specific direction. Through games, which

470 Martine Mauriras Bous~uet

should be called 'instructional' or 'didactic' rather than 'educational', it should be possible, they thought, for specific cognitive or ethical messages to be carried along with the tide of play. Unfortunately, such manipulation takes the meaning out of play, and consequently didactic games are exercises which are no more and no less imperfect than the honest-to- goodness traditional exercises that do not pretend to be anything else. I f 'educational game' is a pleonasm, the expressions 'didactic games', 'instructional games' and 'training games' bring together two contradictory terms. A game can certainly open horizons for children and thus contribute to their overall development, but there would be very little chance of getting them to learn all the subjects on the curriculum by a series of didactic games. Indeed, to the best of my knowledge, this has never been systematically attempted. I f we want play to be constantly associated with learning in school, this will not be achieved by bringing in ready-made didactic games but by introducing the spirit of play into the whole life of the class.

About ten years ago I had the opportunity of visiting a one-teacher school in a village in the province of Man in C6te d'Ivoire. The village was off the beaten track and the school had not yet been linked up to the televised education network, but the young teacher--who did not have an established post--was as good as all the television programmes in the world. He ran his class like a conductor runs his orchestra. His lesson was a 'dance'--there is no other word to describe the kind of global communication in which his whole body was engaged--and the pupils, carried away by the rhythm, were drawn right into the lesson which was transformed into a sort of alternated song and chanted bailer. During the year, a number of conventions to govern the exchange of questions and answers had undoubtedly been worked out between the teacher and the children, the solo performers and the choir, but the rules were simple and f ewuthe lesson was always an improvisation. The teacher did not overdo the use of any particular gimmick,

and play on letters or numbers. The class itself was a tremendous game which was constantly renewed and reinvented.

There is nothing in such a performance that can make up a didactic recipe and be followed, just as it is, by other teachers. The spirit of play cannot be faked. We all have to summon it up for ourselves. In a recent issue of Prospects, S. A. Amonashvili described some of the techniques he used to arouse the interest of the youngest pupils in primary schools: stretching out syllables (h-h-h-he-e-e-r-r-r-o- o-o =hero) to help the children analyse the word, speaking quietly in the classroom to arouse curiosity, geometry exercises 'in the dark' (with closed eyes), collective choice of poetry for recitation, etc. These games are not uninteresting in themselves, but their main value lies in the art and also the warmth with which the teacher uses them, in the fact that he takes his pupilsmI almost said his 'playmates'--seriously and is open with them. That they are 'playmates' is exactly what does emerge from his description of his experiments, since he does not get the children to play but plays with them. The article does more and does better than simply giving ideas about playing. It illustrates most vividly a class that plays and a teacher who organizes the games. As S. A. Amonashvili himself says, 'a great deal in this approach depends on the teacher's personality'; the teacher must be able to 'get inside [the] skins' of his pupils, 'play with children as an equal' and 'turn education into a n ~I~ ' . x9

Not all teachers are games organizers to the manner born, but they can all learn, a~ Training activities in this connection have been increas- ing constantly in recent years. It is true that these usually consist of seminars for the creators and/or organizers of games, offering them further training or refresher courses, but many teachers' associations also hold courses periodically both for primary teachers and for the organizers of holiday camps or of leisure activities for young people. There are even some universities that offer courses on play. Training an organizer of games is not an


easy task, however. Its purpose is not to provide teachers with a knowledge of the psychology of play, the different categories of games, the history of toys, the techniques of devising a pretending game or ways of making things go with a swing. As A. Michelet puts it, ' to teach only techniques would be contrary to the nature of play, which is discovery'. ~1 The means therefore have to be found of bringing out the desire to play in the future games organizers themselves and, for this purpose, of helping them to discover the sources of their own instinct for play, something which obviously cannot be done by a mere transfer of information. ~2

Educational games in school

The first objective of play being to facilitate learning, not of anything in particular but in general, the surest way of introducing the spirit of play into a class is through a teacher who enioys playing. It does not follow, however, that ready-made educational games (traditional or commercial) have no place in school, but their place is limited to occasional activities, at certain stages of learning or on specific sub- iects. In fields suitable to them, ready-made educational games may not only be very useful but virtually irreplaceable. Some examples of this are given below.

I. First of all, the availability of ready-made educational games may encourage a still inexperienced or shy teacher to launch into teaching through play, something which, if left to himself, he would perhaps never do. After using well-tried games as they are, and then adapting them to his particular needs, he will finally invent his own games, adapted to his pupils' needs, the curriculum and the teaching environment. In the Bulletin p3dago- gique of the Institut P6dagogique National of Mali, Sina Coulibaly thus described a number of games to help f i r s t - a n d second-year teachers make their language lessons more lively. Some teachers know how to run their classes very well but others do not quite see

what is involved, and these were the teachers for whom the games were given as an example. '[The] list is not exhaustive and variations can be m a d e . . , on the themes proposed. It is for the teachers to show how inventive they can be to avoid falling back into routine work.'23

2. Games enliven and give a pattern to human relations. 24 They are very effective in establishing communication between pupils themselves and between them and their teachers. According to M. Van Ments, they can help, for example, to break the ice at the beginning of the school year? ~

3. Games help to cross learning thresholds. Learning is usually a matter of routine. The road to learning is open and to move forward we simply have to keep walking. I f there is a long way to go, learning may be tiring, but we can reach the end if we make the effort. On the other hand, if there is an obstacle in the way, or a break or if the lie of the land changes completely, then it is not enough to keep walking and another way has to be found, such as making a leap, finding a way round or finding another means of locomotion. This is where educational games are useful.

To understand something new, or to per- ceive new relationships between ideas, we have to forget our former way of thinking, if only temporarily. Nothing is quite so hard, however. Watzlawick gave a good example of this with the problem of the nine dots to be connected by four straight lines:

Very few people find the solution without help. This is because, with the dots set out in a square we cannot see beyond the square and imagine (without any reason) that the lines we draw must conform to the square, which makes it impossible to solve the problem. ~e Present-day games of mathematics and logic (paradoxes, puzzles, games of analogy or dis- simulation, etc.), like the riddles of old, teach


us how to escape from the mental constructs in which we are trapped and to view new problems with a fresh outlook. Those who become skilled in this type of game learn how to step with agility from one level of logic to another and thus equip themselves, without knowing it, to tackle eventually what are held to be the most difficult principles of mathematical logic. Nevertheless, educational games, as we can dearly see at this point, teach nothing specific (theorems or formulae), but they do open up new vistas, and this is far more important, s7

In the human sciences, the equivalent would be role-playing, which gets the actor used to giving up his own opinions, prejudices and seIfish interests to take on temporarily those of someone else. Generally speaking, however, all games involve forgetting for a time one's usual concerns and customary systems and frameworks of emotion and thought. Playing means agreeing to change and this readiness to change one's mind is the very basis of creativity, discovery and learning.

The applications of this can be seen straight- away: In activities to develop attention, in which

games of logic and language ensure that the child, from the outset, becomes familiar and feels at ease with numbers, geometrical shapes, the idea of relationships, signs and meanings. From games of chance and puzzles to games of analogy, from riddles to logical paradoxes, from singing and glossolalia to poetical games, a wealth of such activities are to be found in all cultures. ~s

In remedial teaching, the purpose of which is not to go over lessons which have not been understood but to return to the obstacle which made the child stumble and help him to overcome it by approaching it from a different angle and with different material. 29

In education for mentally handicapped children, who should be encouraged to play before they are taught anything, s~

Some educational games--simulation games and role-playing--help the child to grasp a

whole series of complex situations, which con- ventional methods of instruction would hardly enable him to do. This type of game is particu- larly useful in teaching history (~You are Montezuma in I519, Napoleon in 1812, the Emperor of China in I839. Knowing what you do today, what would you do in their place?'), in economics (market mechanisms, plannhlg, consumption and investment), in civic instruction (elections, taxation, local authorities) and in making people aware of the great challenges of our time (mutual understanding, peace, disarmament, global solidarity, the danger of drugs, the protection of the environment, sl In all these fields, simulation games and role- playing allow children: (a) to experience and consequently to understand from within a situation that is remote from them or beyond their compass; (13) to put themselves in other people's shoes, and understand their points of view; and (c) to realize that problems are not simple and that their solutions are rarely Ioo per cent good or bad, that they give rise to new problems which need to be tackled and solved in their turn.

In writing this article, I have endeavoured to distinguish between instructional games, educational play and educational games.

Instructional games, in attempting to trans- mit a specific piece of information or pass on an ideological message, encroach on the player's freedom and cease to be entertaining. On the other hand, the term 'educational play' is to some extent tantologous. Playing and learning are one and the same mental process and a good teacher conducts his class in an atmosphere of play. Educational games consist of teaching material prepared in advance and aimed at widening the outlook of pupils in general (games of logic, games of free expression) or with regard to a major human problem (role- playing in connection with peace) which it would be less effective to tackle by conven- tional means.

Educational games can be very worth while provided certain rules are observed. They must not be aimed at transmitting too much

What makes us play? What makes us learn? 4 7 3

information (dates, names, rules, formulae) or at indoctrinating the players, for they would then become instructional games and cease to be real games. Their aim is to widen the mind, not to fill it up. The educational game must, therefore, show full regard for the players' freedom and encourage their spirit of initiative. Finally, educational games must not create a state of dependence. Children must not come to think that to be able to play, they must have a 'play' scene and a machine---microcomputer, video tape-recorder or any other machine. There is something rather disturbing in the fashion for role-playing recreational games on the market. It looks as though some young people are no longer able to use their imaginations and entertain themselves without outside assistance. I t would be unfortunate if ready-made educational games took over the sphere of play in schools in the same way but, to be honest, there is little danger of this occurring ill the near future. �9

Notes I. A. Deledicq and A. Popova, W ar ie t solo, le jeu de

calcut afrieain, Paris, CEDIC, I977- 2. G. Btville, Jeux deformation, Paris, ]~ditions d 'Orga r

nisation, 1986. 3. One, Two, Three . . . Infinity, New York, Viking Press,

1947; Mr Tomkins in Wonderland, London, Cambridge University Press, 1939; Mr Tomkins Inside Himself (in collaboration with Martynas Yeas), New York, Viking Press, I967.

4- G. Holton, Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought, PP. 359-69, Cambridge, Mass. , Harvard University Press, 1973 .

5. E. Haase, Physik des Spielzeug, Leipzig, 1921. 6. R. Pinon, 'Les jouets', in R. Caillois (ed.), Jeux et

sports, p. 28% Paris, Librairie Gallimard (Biblio- th~que de la Pltiade), 1967.

7. Annuaire 1985 des logiciels d'enseignement et de formation. Paris, CESTA, 1985.

8. Examples: 'Le jeu de l 'horloge' (ibid., pp. 197 and IO3), 'La ronde des chiffres' (ibid., pp. 198 and lO2).

9. Le guide pratique de la micro-informatique et des logiciels dducatifs, Paris, Hachette, 1985.

1o. Inside Basic Games. Berkeley, Calif., Sybex Inc., 1981. i i . D. H. Ahl (ed.), Basic Computer Games, New York,

Creative Publications, i978; More Basic Computer Games, New York, Creative Computing, 1979 .

12. G. Rapegno, ' U n ateher club-ordinateur (nivean CM)' , Dossier EPI (Emeignement Public et Informatique), No. 6, September 1984; T. Mullan, 'Some Obser- vations on Children's Attitudes to, and the Role of, Microcomputers in Primary Schools', in Roy Garland (ed.), Microcomputers and Children in the Primary School, pp. I52-3, London, The Falmer Press, 1982.

13. ffeux viddo, jeux de demain, p. 1 I9, Paris, Nathan, I983.

I4. Ibid.

15. J. J- Beishuizen and E. M. Brazier, r pro- grammeren op de basischool', in Computers ol) school (Netherlands), 1984, Vol. I, No. 3, PP. 14-18; an experiment in programming with a group of eight pupils in a primary school.

16. Ilya Virgatchik, Programmer chez sol: le Basic, Verviers

(Belgium), Marabout, 1983; an introduction to

programming in Basic in a few hours.

17. ]'- P. Demouveaux, 'L 'ordinateur h l'tcole: un moyen d' tducation' , Dossier EPI, No. 6, p. 23.

18. 'La fonction ~ducative du jeu', Dossiers pddago- giques (Paris, AUDECAM) , No. 8, November- December 1973-

I9. S. A. Amonashvili, 'Play in the Cognitive Activity of Young Schoolchildren', Prospects, Vol. XVI, No. I, 1986.

20. H. Piitt, ~Der Lehrer als SpielleJter und Ataimateur'~ in K. I. Kreuzer (ed.), Handbueh der Spielpadagogik. Vol. 2, pp. 471-87, Diisseldorf, Scham, 1983.

21. A. Michelet, 'Laissez-les jouer', Animation et ~du- cation (L'enfant et son loisir), No. 56, October- November 1983.

22. M. Mauriras Bousquet, 'L'apprentissage du maitre- meneur de jeu', L'dducation par le jeu et l'environ- nement (Paris), No. 21, 1986.

23. ' A p r o p o s des jeux de langage en I re et 2 e armies' , Bulletin pddagogique trimestriel de l'Institut pddagogique national du Mali, No. 33, 1985, Pp. 41-2.

24. J- W. Pfeiffer and J. E. ]'ones., A Handbook of Structural Experiences for Human Relations Training, La JoUa, Calif., University Associates, 1975; M. Man- liras Bousqueh Thdorie et pratique ludiques, pp. 82-3, 149-52, Paris, ]~ditions Economica, 1984.

25. 'Breaking the Ice: Games to Warm up a New Group' , in J. Megarry (ed.), Perspectives on Academic Gaming and Simulation (Proceedings of the 1975 and I976 Conferences of SAGSET--Socie ty for Academic Gaming and Simulation in Education and Training), pp. 15-19, London, Kogan Page, 1978.

26. P. Watzlawick, I. Weakland, R. Fisch, Change, Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resol- ution, New York, W. Norton & Co. Inc., 1974.

27. Some examples: Lewis Carroll, Game of Logic (1887); G. Gamow and M. Stern, Jeux mathdmaHques, Paris, ]~ditions Dunod, 1959; M. Meirovitz and p. ]'acobs, Muscles of the Mind. The Fun Way to Increase your Natural Intelligence by Playing Games. Englewood Cliffs, lxT.J., Prentice Hall, 1981.


28. j~uegos edueativos, Quito, Ministerio de Educaci6n y Cultura, 1979 (the use of loto in learning how to count); G. Bateson, Mind and Nature. ,4 Necessary Unity, New York, Bantam Books, 1979 (an outstanding introduction to paradoxes, analogies and the division of a whole into parts, to synonymous language, etc.); E. Y. Eglewogbe, Games and Songs as Education Media (a case-study amongthe Ewes of Ghana), Accra, Ghana Publishing Corporation, I975; S. Christophe and C. Grosset-Bureau, Jeux podtiques et langue ~rite, Paris, Armand Colin, x985.

29. P. G. Dean, 'A Study of the Use of Mathematical Games in a Primary School', in Megarry, op. cit., PP. 69-75.

30. R. van de Kooij, R. de Groot, That's All in the Game, Theory and Research, Practice and Future of Children's Play, Chapter V, Rheinstetten (Fed. Rep. of Ger- many), Schindeleverlag, I977.

3I. M. Mauriras Bousquet, 'An Educational Technique of Great Potential: Simulation Games', Prospects, Vol. IV, No. 4, x974-

what makes us play? what makes us learn?

Documents