Have You Ever Played The Let's Pretend Game?

Source: https://fyi.uwex.edu

The economic principle I will be exploring is: Institutions are the “rules of the game” that influence choices. My research question to help me study this principle is “How does the “let’s pretend game” influence students utility and incentives in school?”  Neil Postman writes about curriculum in his article “Teaching as a Subversive Activity” and he explains how kids play the “let’s pretend game” to get their way through curriculum that often is not relevant to them or the real world. 

 First, Postman starts off by saying that most of the questions, tests/quizzes, homework etc. that you feel you need to do well on in school are things you don’t actually want to learn, but you feel you have to pretend to care about what you are learning when really it’s just about the grade. He goes on to give some examples that I found very true. He shares  examples of this such as “Let’s pretend that what bores you is important, and that the more you are bored, the more important it is.” or “Let’s pretend that your intellectual competence can be judged on the basis of how well you can play the Let’s pretend game.”

This explains that your utility is put to the side to learn things you have to pretend to enjoy. This game of pretending gives you incentives to act like you care about all of your subjects when actually you might just be interested in one or two. This is something I see all the time. Kids are constantly pretending to care about everything they are learning to get a good grade. I know for me that I don’t enjoy History but I pretend to like it so that I can get a good grade.

Second, Postman shares 14 things that school doesn't teach by James Agee. A couple I found interesting are “on the curriculum: I discovered that there is… c) no attempt to clarify psychological situations in the individual, in his family, or in his world.” and he also mentions “...g) no attempts beyond the most nominal and stifling to awaken, to protect, or to guide the sense of investigation, the sense of joy, the sense of beauty.” So rather than learning life lessons we learn things that might not interest us but we have to, so we pretend to care. I personally think that there should be a Mental Health everyone is required to take their senior year.

Third, Postman’s overall reason for writing this article is to show his readers the things students have to learn v.s things they should be taught. He uses the “Let’s pretend game” to show that the things we have to learn are things we have to pretend to enjoy to get through it and get a good grade. He also uses it to show that you’re taught to learn things in school because they are “important” when in reality you might not really be interested in it. The things that are important in school are your happiness/utility and your incentives.

 In my next blog post I will explore: What do schools prepare students for?