The Role and Benefits of Humor in Education, Slides of Sociology

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HUMOR AND EDUCATION

Education Point of View!

Children Laughing & Playing

Has the fun

gone out of

school?

With all the

pressures

for higher test scores, adults

are struggling to balance

the value of play vs. “work.”

On the side of play and humor

people argue that humor:

• Fosters analytic, critical, and divergent

thinking,

• Catches and holds students’ attention,
• Increases retention of learned material,
• Relieves stress and builds rapport between

teachers and students,

• Builds team spirit among classmates and

smooths potentially rough interactions,

• Promotes risk taking while getting shy and

slow students involved in activities.

Teacher burn-out is a serious issues

because if the teacher is stressed, the

students will also feel tense.

“Survival Rules” cited by John Morreall:

1.Try hard to see the absurdity in difficult

situations.

2.Learn to take yourself lightly while

taking your work seriously, and

3.Develop your sense of joy and being

alive.

Metcalf and Felible in Lighten Up: Survival

Skills for People Living Under Pressure

suggest that :

To keep yourself from plodding to school looking and feeling like this, go visit a photo booth and take several pictures of yourself with outlandishly distorted faces.

Then when a major problem arises, take out the photos and think, “You are not just the problem you’re having: you’re this too!”

Putting Excuses in Their

Place

• Teacher Bill Haggart has noticed that students are

really good at thinking of excuses for being absent or for not doing their homework assignments. He accepts only written excuses, and when students bring them to him he has the student place their note on a bulletin board under one of the three following categories:

• Helpless,
• Hopeless, or
• Not in Control of the Body. The activity brings a light touch to the moment, while also making students think twice about whether they want to bring in an excuse.

Teachers Miss an Opportunity if They Do

Not Make Humorous Books Available

SOME FAVORITES:

• Roald Dahl
• Jack Gantos
• Gary Paulsen
• J. K. Rowling
• Louis Sachar
• Shel Silverstein
• Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler)

ANTI-AUTHORITY HUMOR

Alison Lurie in her Don’t Tell the Grown-Ups: Why Kids Love the Books They Do conjectures that one of the reasons children love the Winnie the Pooh books is that they identify with Christopher Robin, who gets to be an all-powerful, beneficent dictator, or at least the parent figure, for Eeyore, Kanga, Baby Roo, Owl, Piglet, Pooh, Rabbit and Tigger.

COMEDIES OF MANNERS

One of the most entertaining comedies of manners is Barbara Robinson’s The Best Christmas Pageant Ever in which the worst kids in town, the Herdmans, who have even been known to smoke cigars and to steal stuff from the Sunday School cupboard, are assigned the best parts in the Christmas program.

EXAGGERATION

The greedy children who get their just desserts on

Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory make

readers feel superior as do the characters in Harry

Allard and James Marshall’s The Stupids Have a Ball ,

The Stupids Step Out , and The Stupids Die.

LANGUAGE PLAY

One of Judy Blume’s strengths in such books as Are

You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, and Tales of a

Fourth Grade Nothing is the witty dialogue of her

characters.

EMOTIONAL MATURITY

Judith Viorst’s Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No

Good, Very Bad Day makes readers laugh while

lending reassurance that people do survive bad days.

We found this picture on-line and have no idea what

the teacher did to arouse such energy and enthusiasm.

From your own experience in school, suggest ideas.

Three-fourths of the time in what

used to be called “Grammar School”

is spent on language skills.

• Walter Redfern, in his Puns says that

children play with words much like they

do with toys.

• Without humor, they would lack

practice in the art of thinking—the most

complex and powerful survival tool that

humans have.

• The puns and double meanings in nursery

rhymes and nonsense verse get children

ready for the double meanings of words in

the Amelia Bedelia books that you probably

remember from grade school.

• Amelia is a housemaid who takes everything

literally.

• When she is told to “put out the lights,” she hangs the light bulbs outside on the clothesline.
• When she is told to “dress the chicken,” she puts ruffles and a skirt on it.
• When she is told to “draw the drapes,” she gets out a sketch pad and makes a picture.

DO YOU REMEMBER ANY OF HER OTHER

PUNS?

This little boy leaving the public library in

Provo, Utah plays a joke by sharing his

book with the bronze statue “boy.”