This document discusses the concept of a "Play Ethic" and what a Play Ethic approach to radical childcare might look like. It defines play as "adaptive potentiation" that allows rehearsal for living with complexity through a balance of risk and security. A Play Ethic presumes the freedom, imagination and rebelliousness of subjects, conveying confidence in one's ability to shape oneself and one's world. For radical childcare, it would justify building fully professionalized free preschools, more car-free public spaces for play, and policies promoting reduced working hours to allow more time for community play among both children and adults.

1. THE PLAY ETHIC
AND RADICAL
CHILDCARE
PAT KANE

2. www.patkane.global
www.thealternative.org.uk
2004

3. What is Play?
What is an Ethic?
What is a Play Ethic?
What would a Play Ethic for Radical Childcare
look like?
What would it help us to make and build?

4. What is Play?
“Ethan Laughing”

5. What is Play?
Micah laughing (as he tears up his dad’s job application
rejection letter

6. What is Play?
It’s ”adaptive potentiation” (Sutton-Smith)
It’s a pleasurable rehearsal for living with the complexity of
subjects and objects… (with the rehearsal increasingly
becoming the actual performance…)
It’s a calibration between ”risk” and ”security”, which needs
”zones of proximal development” (Zygotsky)
All of the polarities of the human condition are “taken
lightly” and “put into play” - both freedom and determinism.
(The joy of finding that solids can be ripped…)

7. What is Play?
What is an Ethic?
What is a Play Ethic?
What would a Play Ethic for Radical
Childcare look like?
What would it help and justify building?

8. What is an Ethic?
Micheal Foucault:
“Ethics is the considered
form that freedom takes
when it is informed by
reflection…we cannot act
as ethical subjects without
the possibility of refusal”

9. What is an Ethic?
For all humans, play
creates that zone in which
we can establish some
freedom to test out how
we can shape our selves,
and our lives with others…
…So there’s a strong claim
that play IS the seat of
ethics…

10. What is Play?
What is an Ethic?
What is a Play Ethic?
What would a Play Ethic for Radical Childcare
look like?
What would it justify building?

11. What is a Play Ethic? (1)
An ethos that presumes
the freedom, powers,
imagination and
rebelliousness of
subjects. It says, ”be
confident that you can
fashion both yourself -
and a world that can
support your flourishing”

12. What is a Play Ethic? (2)
It’s what comes after the “work
ethic”…which presumed ”the soul’s
play-day is the devil’s work-day”, ”the
devil makes work for idle hands”…
But in the info/networked age, with
creativity and dynamism at its core,
we need an ethos which recognizes &
welcomes that energy – gives us
confidence to handle it, craft it into
true, good and beautiful forms
[Close to a social anarchism/ecology,
a la Bookchin]

13. WHAT WOULD A PLAY
ETHIC FOR RADICAL
CHILDCARE LOOK
LIKE?

14. The most developmental play
is a calibration of “risk” and
”security”…
So a “PE4RC” would attend
not just to playgrounds but to
the “grounds of play” – and
not just for infants & children,
but for families, adults and
communities too…

15. WHAT WOULD
IT JUSTIFY
BUILDING?

16. So for radical childcare:
• 3-7 years play-based
kindergarten, fully
professionalized, free
access (see
www.upstart.scot)
• Robust car-free policy,
combined with active
playzone/festivity quotient
in new

17. But also for radical adultcare:
• Work towards city-wide
reduction in working hours
– longer and longer 3-4
weekends. Communities
that have time and space
play together flourish in
their bodies and minds, as
emotional, civic and
creative beings.

18. www.patkane.global
www.thealternative.org.uk
THANK YOU!