Time out of joint...

”Time, time, time... see what’s become of me...”
Hazy Shade of Winter, Simon and Garfunkel

It’s hard to know where to start when reflecting on the first International Play On Conference in Athens. A whole host of presenters and workshops each with their own take on play and pedagogy came thick and fast and posed as many questions as there were answers given.

Now, sitting in a moment of reflection, I’m hoping to piece my thoughts on some of the presentations to share with you the experience and what I unearthed for my own thinking along the way. I’ll share my own interpretation of the main keynote talks and I hope that the speakers themselves won’t mind me doing so.

Firstly I’d like to say what an amazing experience the conference was. A lineup of ‘giants’, an array of passionate Early Years practitioners from across the world and a team of volunteers making sure that the event ran smoothly - Greek hospitality is definitely second to none!!

The conference opened with Suzanne Axelsson exploring her concept of Original Learning, and what an opening talk it was!

What resonated for me most of all from the myriad of important thoughts which Suzanne shared was a discussion about time itself.

She presented the notion that there are two types of time based on two Greek words: chronos and aeon which can applied to our interactions with children and children’s experiences.

Chronos is timetable, the clock, the tick of the second hand, the wristwatch, the measure, the deadline, the school bell, control and order...

Aeon is akin to being ‘lost in time’, of timelessness itself, of living beyond time, of its existence just slipping away, of it no longer have meaning or purpose or delineation.

Children of course live in ‘aeon’ and adults live in ‘chronos’ so there exists a natural tension between the two.

I began to frame it in my mind akin to a holiday romance. There is a shared moment(s) in which two people abandon ‘time’ and become timeless - it’s as though both people step out of time itself and they enter aeon.

However, chronos is not so easily cheated: there is a schedule, a flight time and an inevitable closure to aeos which brings pain, difficulty and pining...

Children are no different in their play. They exist in a different time zone to us. They live in a time zone that isn’t about wristwatch and clock watching, they’re unaware and they become ‘lost in space and time’. Our role as adults and educators is to be sensitive to this time difference, to do our utmost to leave chronos and enter aeon with the children. It’s about giving children time, not taking it from them.

Yes, there is the reality of time but it is perhaps how we wield it that is most important - do we hold time as an unyielding series of punctuation points or do we treat it as a softer landscape of aeon as we step into the magic of children? Because who doesn’t want the aeon of holiday romance to last forever after all??

Certainly in my own practice and pedagogy it recalled my idea of the play sandwich - two short elements of skills teaching which one might consider as chronos, surrounding a think wedge of play which one would consider aeon.

Time clipping Eros’s wings - Pierre Mignard 1694

In much of my own thinking, I am drawn to the writings of CS Lewis to imagine the magic realm within which children exist.

As soon as Suzanne explored the chronos/aeon dichotomy, my mind raced to the final chapter of the Last Battle in which the magic door is opened by Aslan and the animals and the Pevense children walk through into a new Narnia, into a never ending magic realm, the realm of infinite aeon.

And who did Aslan call to destroy the old Narnia?
Who did he know would be able to destroy the world but ultimately could not destroy the power and the possibilities of aeon in the magic realm?

Old Father Time.

Tick tock...

“Term time has ended, the holidays have begun...”

🇬🇷 🇧🇬