Rethinking Leisure and Education

The renowned economist John Maynard Keynes chose a strange time indeed to discuss leisure. In the midst of the global financial crisis that broke out in 1929, he wrote a curious essay called “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren” (Keynes, 2009), in which he predicted not only that the global market would recover easily but that the next generations would have plenty more free time on their hands. He declared nothing less than the coming solution to man’s ancient problem – scarcity and the necessity to provide for his needs. Then, Keynes argued, the real problem will arise: In the absence of economic necessity, men and women will be free to search for meaning. Speculating that this development would occur in around 100 years, Keynes was not totally off the mark. Already the working week is getting shorter in many developed countries and scarcity, when it exists, is often not in basic needs but in secondary, more leisure-oriented goods. In a way and at least in many parts of the world, Keynes’ grandchildren do enjoy the fruits of technological and economic progress that allows them to concentrate – through leisure activities – on the meaning of their lives. But Keynes was also aware that this change would not be easy to swallow. He believed that the “old Adam” mentality (“through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life”) would be persistent, and that many people would still act out of “intense, unsatisfied purposiveness” even when it succumbs to absurdity. To welcome this desired change in the course of the human race, Keynes concludes with what we can see as an educational suggestion to make “mild preparations for our destiny, in encouraging, and experimenting in, the arts of life as well as the activities of purpose.” This collection of articles explores the relationship between leisure and education, and is driven by an unsettling notion that contemporary education is not directed toward leisurely “arts of life” as it should be but is composed of a variety of unfree and often purely instrumental “activities of purpose.” We find that leisure is often discredited as not important enough or criticized as useless and in need of defense. Much like philosophy and education, leisure – historically and conceptually connected to the two – can be regarded as a “waste of time” or at least a potential one. Specifically, with regard to the relationship between leisure and education, the widely known fact that the word school originated from the ancient Greek word for leisure – scholé – speaks volumes to the historical and conceptual tie between the two as well as to the changes in our understanding of them, so much so that school today is not considered leisure at all. Defending leisure, and an education based on it, against this accusation of uselessness can take a utilitarian approach, according to which leisure activities when taken in the “right way” can bring about desired goals like stress reduction, physical health or personal development. But the articles in this issue do not follow this instrumental approach. Instead, they regard leisure as primarily an end in itself, thereby following, and struggling with, the classic view of leisure. Inspired by the ancient concept of scholé, Givanni Ildefonso-Sánchez argues against our current conception of leisure in which it is understood as primarily a consumer good within capitalist society, and in educational settings it is therefore discussed mainly as an unnecessary addition to real learning and schoolwork. Instead, she appeals to the classic ideal of leisure, which she connects to the concepts of culture and …