The Banality of Fun – David Ashton

There is a mystery that troubles RE teachers across the country. It is oft spoken of in staffrooms and on social media, at conferences and in CPD. ‘How can we make RE more fun and exciting?’ The result of this is that ‘fun’ often becomes the grand director; the dominant principle shaping lesson planning in RE. In this piece I will explore four reasons why this is problematic.

1. Inane Activities

The pursuit of fun frequently results in crass activities which distract from or replace the subject matter. One example I recently encountered of this was a year 7 class making paper Facebook profile pages for Jesus. As I observed pupils ‘liking’ Mary, ‘poking’ John the Baptist and sending friend requests (mainly to non-biblical characters of different eras), I wondered whether they were gaining anything more than unhelpful messages from this activity. Similar things can be said of the ‘Hindu Gods Top Trumps’ resource, rated highly by its 1400+ viewers on restuff.org and ‘recommended’ with five stars on TES. In this game, pupils are given cards containing different Hindu deities. Each deity’s characteristics, for example their name, powers and method of transport, are rated out of three stars. If a pupil’s deity has more stars for a chosen characteristic than their partner’s, they gain their partner’s card. This activity is rivalled by another ‘popular’ TES resource in which GCSE pupils play snakes and ladders in order to revise Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Another widely used year 7 activity is junk modelling a place of worship out of cardboard boxes, an activity that usually spans over two or three lessons. If our aim in RE is to make pupils into better builders, then construction tasks may help, but if our aim is to engage them in a rigorous, academic enquiry into religion, pupils need greater challenge than considering whether to use a cornflake box or a toilet roll for their church spire. My doubts over this activity only increased when I saw it done in a challenging school with marshmallows and spaghetti sticks. As I glanced around the room mid activity at a pupil chewing on a half made marshmallow pew, another dodging a marshmallow door launched at him across the room, I was in no doubt that many pupils were having fun. The problem was that their combined learning wouldn’t fill a post it note and most of it had nothing to do with religion.

This problem is summed up by cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham in his phrase “memory is the residue of thought.” In other words, we remember the things we think deeply about. Rather than ‘how can we have fun?’ we should ask ourselves ‘what will pupils be thinking about at each stage in this lesson?’ or ‘how am I going to make pupils think deeply about the content in the lesson?’ With so much of worth to cover, the opportunity cost of what we do in our lessons needs careful thought. We are sometimes quick to complain about limited curriculum time, but then waste the time we do have. Whilst learning and fun are not mutually exclusive, if we want school leaders (and pupils) to take RE seriously, we should avoid activities that find their best, or even sole justification in the fact they are ‘fun.’

2. Discordance of Method and Content

The Internet is a goldmine of Simpsons inspired RE resources. These include a GCSE writing frame based on The Simpsons, ‘Flanders’ Guide To Christianity’ and a 99 page planning aid for teachers of KS3-KS5 pupils titled ‘The Wit and Wisdom of Lisa Simpson.’ Its opening statement “This series of lesson plans is based largely around the character of Lisa Simpson,” is at least honest, if misguided. Lesson plans are provided for teaching everything from Aristotle to Utilitarianism and the nature of the church to the nature of truth, all through the illuminating life of Lisa Simpson.

RE teachers are fortunate. Our subject matter is innately provocative, interesting and relevant and these features are powerful initiators of learning. Fun however, is rarely integral to our subject matter. The question often asked by RE teachers ‘how can I make this topic fun?’ makes little sense. If a topic is not inherently fun, one cannot make it so without changing its nature, one can only create a fun way of learning about it. However, in doing this there is a risk that we devalue what is integral, and impose a superficial companion to the subject matter, through distracting approaches and activities.

The successful book ‘100 Ideas For Teaching Religious Education’  gives the following advice: 

One of the banes of the RE teacher’s life is the badly thrown paper plane. Why not turn things on their head by using pupils’ interest in making them to your advantage? Give all pupils a piece of paper. At the front or on the whiteboard, show how you wish them to make a plane. On the plane, they must write a question. They will then fly their plane in the direction of another pupil who must try to answer the question posed.

The book suggests six questions including, “What question would you like to ask Muhammad?” “Why do you think there is evil and suffering in the world?” and “Do you think science disproves religion?”

If pupils are to be expected to reflect maturely and meaningfully on important questions, they need an environment that prizes thoughtful enquiry, not messing around with paper planes. We do not play to our subjects’ strengths by pursuing fun; we have more edifying educational tools, and more profound things to offer than frivolous happy highs. Activities must reflect the nature of the topic and this is particularly so when the topic requires extra sensitivity to pupils and sensitivity of content. Attempting to make a topic like the problem of evil, near death experiences, jihad or heaven and hell ‘fun’ betrays the very nature of them. We should avoid tying ourselves up in a marriage of discomfort with this unnatural partner.

3. Destructive Cross-curricular Ventures

The pursuit of fun often leads into cross-curricular ventures, where RE is subsumed by another discipline. It may result in RE being turned into DT, as in the previously described junk modelling activity. It may also cause RE to become a drama lesson in which pupils spend most of their time thinking about what accent to use, or where to stand in their role play. However, the subject that RE seems to get tangled up in and confused with most is Art. An entire section of the aforementioned ‘100 Ideas For Teaching Religious Education’ is dedicated to using art in RE, recommending activities such as making stained glass windows out of sugar paper and tissue paper.

Another way in which art absorbs RE is the popular Spirited Arts competition where pupils create a piece of art based on a broadly spiritual idea. I have no problem with the Spirited Arts competition, but it is exactly what it says it is; an art competition. The requirements for proficiency in it are heavily weighted towards art rather than RE. Pursued as an extra curricular activity it is commendable, but when considered within the context of limited time and widespread religious illiteracy, we should consider whether the genuine subject specific value offered by it, justifies the considerable amount of RE lessons it occupies in many schools.

4. A Falsely Negative View of Human Nature.

Even if lessons do not plummet to the trite form of religious edutainment in some of the examples above, the fixation with fun is misguided. It is based on an assumption that children are educational hedonists incapable of engagement, enjoyment or learning without having fun. Those who view ‘fun’ as the holy grail to learning, often attempt to hijack and monopolise terms such as ‘engagement’ and ‘enjoyment’, suggesting they are almost synonymous with, and certainly a direct result of, having fun. Their logic follows that the opposite of fun is boredom and this leads to disengagement and no learning. The stark, binary distinction of this formula is devious, leading teachers to particular conclusions. It goes without saying, no good teacher aims to bore and disengage pupils. To argue that the only alternative to a fun lesson is a boring one, is unimaginative. This damaging philosophy is based on a falsely negative view of human curiosity. It fuels low expectations and results in an impoverished intellectual experience for pupils, particularly those already educationally disadvantaged, or in challenging schools where ‘having fun’ and ‘keeping pupils engaged’ become excuses for not offering an appropriately challenging academic curriculum.

Aristotle wrote ‘all men possess by nature a craving for knowledge.’ Children are naturally inquisitive, eager to enquire, eager to discover. Their curiosity should be stretched beyond crass and unchallenging activities. Many pupils do not want a classroom where they are dodging paper aeroplanes, they want to learn and succeed, not be patronised or pandered to by a teacher’s dubious notion of ‘fun.’  They should be allowed to master appropriately demanding material, defeat problems and experience the accompanying rewards of joy, accomplishment and success. Challenging learning unlocks a desire for further learning. Having one’s mind set alight by an enquiry, which provokes even more questions, is a motivational force fuelling further discovery and enjoyment in learning. Interest creates more interest. Fun, on the other hand, is an end in itself, and if little deep learning has occurred, for the pupils it can feel like a shallow, wasteful way to have spent a lesson. It is mastery not marshmallows, success not spaghetti that feeds pupils’ desire to learn.

Planning Higher Impact Lessons

I am certainly not arguing for entirely sombre, solemn lessons that ignore pupils’ own interests. Pupils’ interests and questions should be a touchpoint, without reducing the lesson to no more than this. Furthermore, factors extraneous to the content, for example the nature of the class, or the teacher’s persona, style, interaction and relationship with them, may often create a good humoured, entertaining environment that is advantageous to learning. However when it comes to our content, we must guard its integrity. It should not be debased to a tool for having fun. To allow pupils to find enjoyment and reward through engagement in challenging subject matter, is a harder route than ‘making it fun.’ It requires truly thoughtful and imaginative planning and teaching.

The insights of cognitive science may again offer a helpful starting point. Willingham suggests building lessons around potential conflicts or big questions in the content to be studied. He writes, “start with the material you want your students to learn, and think backward to the intellectual question it poses.” When planning lessons, this insight might lead us to ask, ‘what provocative question is answered by the material I want pupils to consider?’ or ‘what conflicts are inherent in this content, which could create an interesting question to frame the learning or investigation of the lesson?’ This is not a restrictive approach or reduction of RE to a list of facts, but at the same time it acknowledges the necessity of knowledge for genuinely skilled thinking. It is an open-ended approach where as conflicts are resolved other complications arise, furthering exploration and deepening learning. Structuring lessons in this way can create a dramatic narrative and evaluative framework, which can aid pupil engagement in the actual subject matter thereby allowing them to transcend their own experience.

There are rare occasions when a teacher might consciously opt to use an inferior, fun but sensitive activity for the sake of variation. However as a general rule, rather than imposing fun on our subject where it is not present, we should draw out the interest that is intrinsic to it. With the wrong priorities in planning, we inevitably spend valuable lesson time on the wrong things, and through no lack of effort, put a cap on the impact we cam have. We can do better than ‘making it fun.’ If we dare to do so, we will offer pupils a deeper and more real critical confrontation with the heart of our subject.

David Ashton is a secondary school RE teacher. He blogs about RE on thegoldencalfre.wordpress.com

Follow David on Twitter @thegoldencalfre