Pedagogy of the Playful and the Humorous

A virtue educators seek to instill in students is an openness to recognize that there are multiple points of view on any and all theoretical and practical matters, and also the inclination to genuinely shift perspectives among them. Aristotle, in part, encapsulates this notion: "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without believing it." I will focus on Aristotle's conception of "entertain", looking at synonyms like "consider", "imagine", "suppose", commonly found prefacing thought experiments, or playing with thought in the laboratory of our minds. For students to sincerely take on alternative perspectives without starting from their own view from which all others are assessed, something more is needed than the mere capacity and inclination toward perspective taking. A playful humorous attitude can provide a unique, instrumentally and intrinsically valuable approach, in which we take on different world views for the sheer pleasure of it. We might playfully adopt vastly divergent belief systems from what we currently take to be true, and in doing so, serendipitously discover a possible truth that might have remained concealed by our very serious goal of truth-seeking. The sense of "playful" I will be using in the context of education is a commingling of John Dewey, Paulo Freire, bell hooks, Maria Lugones, and especially philosopher of games and play, C. Thi Nguyen. This will be coupled with an analysis of a humorous attitude espoused by philosophers of humor such as John Morreall.