Why We Play: The Search for Motives and Meaning in Action

How does Vygotsky understand children's play? Why is play important for children's growth and development? What role do childhood play experiences ultimately occupy in an individual's life course? And why has this role been overlooked or forgotten by us?

First, Vygotsky holds that when we choose to attend to children's play, what we should attend to first is "needs." He uses the concept of "the maturing of needs" to describe the essence of play. Play is, in essence, a form of behavior, and behind a person's decision to engage in a given behavior lie needs. Therefore, what we should discuss is this: what needs and incentives drive children's acts of play. This starting point for discussion is similar to Piaget's understanding of play. Piaget held that play is a behavioral orientation governed by self-purposes, and he too attended to the motivation behind behavior, although their understandings of the essence of play differ.

‍ ‍Vygotsky holds that the "imaginary situation" of play distinguishes it fundamentally from other types of activity, rather than characteristics such as "pleasure," "freedom," or "symbolic representation." This is because play is truly born only when a child "creates a fictional field in which meaning is detached from real objects and begins to govern action." This view continues to respond to the starting point of the discussion, namely that the imaginary situation of play gives rise to the child's motivation to act. When a child listens to a story, he or she may also feel pleasure and freedom, and may also be using language as a symbolic system, yet evidently the child is not playing.

Vygotsky further explains that the source of motivation is the psychological conflict that arises in the child. Before the age of three, when needs cannot be satisfied in time, this psychological conflict can be relieved by diverting the child's attention. After the age of three, however, children develop a large number of "desires that cannot be immediately realized," and if these desires cannot be fulfilled at once, the child falls into persistent frustration. Children therefore ease this psychological conflict by creating an imaginary situation. At the same time, he discusses the important role of "rules" in play: he argues that the imaginary situation of play necessarily contains rules. In play, in order to realize their wishes, children must submit to rules. The phenomenon of children voluntarily conforming to rules exists only in imaginary situations, and the imaginary situation is the key vehicle for the development of children's willpower and self-control. In early childhood, a child's behavior is governed by the "visual field" (that is, what is visible before the eyes): upon seeing a door, the child wants to open it; upon seeing a staircase, the child wants to climb it. In the "imaginary situation," by contrast, the child's actions are governed by the "field of meaning" (that is, ideas in the mind), as when a stick is treated as a "steering wheel." The imaginary situation is the first step by which the child escapes the status of "slave to the environment." Vygotsky holds that, in the imaginary situation, the child achieves for the first time "the separation of meaning from object." This separation is the germ of abstract thought and the cornerstone for the development of higher human psychological functions (such as will, planning, and logical reasoning). He argues that the role of play in child development is to transform the child from a biological being constrained by the immediate environment into a social being able to be governed by internal meanings and rules.

I would like to say more about my own thoughts on the inner conflict that Vygotsky mentions. Vygotsky was undoubtedly influenced by Marxist philosophy, and his introduction of the notion of contradiction leads me to reflect on artistic creation. It is often said that children are rich in imagination and creative, as are artists, and that artists therefore always retain a childlike heart. In terms of my own life experience, I now seem to be able to truly understand this saying. For example, many writers and directors, when discussing the motivations behind their creative acts, mention that artistic creation is an irrepressible impulse, which is why genuine art is always sincere. I, too, often experience this impulse profoundly: when inner conflicts cannot be reconciled in reality, people can only ease them within the imaginary situation of art, in search of meaning. Adults choose art, while children choose play.

Play is the most universal form of behavior in human childhood, and in adulthood our daily lives are likewise composed of a series of behaviors. Take today, up to this moment at 11:40 in the morning: the behaviors I have performed include getting up, getting dressed, eating breakfast, commuting, arriving at the university library, and beginning to read and write. I perform this series of behaviors because I still hold some overall motivation toward life. It is hard to imagine how chaotic the order of human society would be if it were not for the motivations, of one kind or another, that drive people's behaviors; this way of thinking carries a certain historical-idealist coloring. Although these behaviors are not, strictly speaking, play, according to the views of Vygotsky and Piaget they can nonetheless be regarded as play. For instance, if behind this series of behaviors there is an imaginary situation that I have conceived for myself, and I can perceive the meaning of the actions I take; if I abide by particular social rules and delay the satisfaction of my inner desires; and if I keep taking new actions because some kind of conflict has arisen within me, so that I need this period of time to make certain changes, then childhood play experiences had already foretold such an adult life for us. Alternatively, from Piaget's perspective, if my present behavior is an action governed by self-purposes, then I am likewise in a state of play.

‍ ‍Thus, their understandings of play are essentially similar, except that Vygotsky places greater emphasis on the exploration of the meaning of life on the basis of adapting to external rules, whereas Piaget places greater emphasis on realizing the potential of the individual's intrinsic motivation, adjusting the relationship between internal and external purposes according to the situation, rather than adapting entirely to external purposes.

Therefore, as teachers, our profession requires us to engage in interpersonal interaction with children that is defined, to a certain degree, as "scientific" and "professional," and so we must remain consistently sensitive to human behavior itself and the motivations behind it. If our education could enable us, from an early age, to learn to recognize our genuine motivations, to respect our genuine motivations, or to find the intrinsic motivation behind a given behavior, and to support us in achieving our motivations, then such an education would undoubtedly be genuinely needed, rather than a predetermined program of social life. As Vygotsky writes: every advance is due to a marked change in motives. My interpretation of this is that high-quality motives make the changes we undertake qualitative ones. To perceive and adjust our motives at every moment is to take responsibility for our behaviors and choices.

Had I not experienced life, my discussion would still remain at the level of educational theory, sounding unrelated to the lives of most people. But now, when I read these educational theories again, I have many new reflections on them. Previously, as a student, I studied education, a discipline that attempts to prepare children for entering the world, yet absurdly I had never experienced what the real world and real life are actually like. It was therefore difficult for me to form my own thoughts on these theories; more often than not it was merely a kind of imagination. As at this moment, when I hear Vygotsky and Piaget both discuss play from the standpoint of the motivations behind individual behavior, I feel that education is no longer merely a professional discourse system shared only by those within the field, but rather a more universal philosophy of life, and that these discussions can take place at every stage of human life. As Rousseau also discussed, we live in a society of mutual comparison, and so we cannot truly grow our own most genuine motives for living; we merely want to occupy a superior position within the collective, to appear a little better than others. These problems are universal; they do not exist only in childhood, but childhood experiences, to a large extent, cause these notions to take shape within us. I therefore often feel that if we choose to take education as a testing ground for civilization, we are consciously cultivating more possibilities for the ultimate form of human social organization and of individual ways of life. Yet actual education has long since lost the courage to innovate, merely continuing to discipline generation after generation of young lives into adapting to reality, even though reality can no longer create for us an imaginary situation from which we might find meaning. But when I see the beautiful imaginings and meanings that children bestow upon the world in their play, I feel again that I must do something about it.