August 5, 2008 Taking Play Seriously by Robin Marantz Henig Part
VIIII Koach Karl continues this great article on "Play"…
Bateson, a prominent play scholar who recognizes the quandary
posed by equifinality, suggested that play is the best way to
reach certain goals. Through play, an individual avoids what he
called the lure of ‘‘false endpoints,’’ a problem-solving style
more typical of harried adults than of playful youngsters. False
endpoints are avoided through play, Bateson wrote, because
players are having so much fun that they keep noodling away at a
problem and might well arrive at something better than the
first, good-enough solution. But maybe the flexibility
hypothesis is itself a false endpoint. Maybe the idea that play
is the best route to a whole host of good results — creativity,
social agility, overall mental suppleness — is just the first
idea scientists landed on, and they were inclined to accept it
because it fit so well with their innate ideas about the nature
of childhood. This is the view