Experience becomes trusted as an important source and method of knowing. Sharing and reflecting on experiences with friends and colleagues shapes our learning, deepens and expands what we know, and makes the whole process more enjoyable.

Competition and having to perform according to other people's standards alienates and inhibits us from expressing the best within us. The "best within us" is often submerged and unavailable waiting to be released when we discover our "voices" and begin to believe in ourselves as members of a community of knowledge-makers. Until then, many of us perfect male-style procedures for achieving success whether this be in institutions of learning or at the workplace (4).

Affirming our playful selves is not always easy and may even be accomplished at great cost in the western world because of contradictory messages around play and fulfillment. We are promised the wonders of the good life when we drink the right beer, chew striped gum, or use sexy antiperspirant; at the same time, guilt is imposed on excessive pleasure and delight. In double-speak, "doing your own thing" may actually mean doing what everybody else does. When playfulness leads to thinking for ourselves or acting defiantly in the face of oppression it becomes a radical act. Joyful, creative and spontaneous behaviour can be threatening to those who value order, conformity and control. The ability to freely imagine, to colour outside the lines, and to take action toward "what could be" may actually work to subvert "what is," or the status quo. Dale Spender notes the delight many women experience when they learn its okay, even empowering, to be angry and defiant (5). Canada Raging Grannies are a case in point (6).

Playful behaviour is circumspect. Obedience and order are necessary for the maintenance of the patriarchal system. Despite or because of this, it is critical that women of all ages remember and stress the positive aspects of our culture. The human potential for joy and celebration is a valuable means of staying connected, and of healing ourselves and our communities in these despairing times. We need to cherish the creativity, the joys, the achievements, and the resourcefulness which women have demonstrated throughout our history. Reclaiming playas a contribution to the serious learning and work of our lives is a beginning. There are lessons to be learned from the older, wiser and more outrageous among us.

Lanie Melamed did her graduate studies in Adult Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Her eclectic research interests are in the area of women's ways of knowing, feminist pedagogy, adult play, and educating for peace and social change. She teaches at Concordia University in Montreal.

1. Schiller, J.C. "Letters on the esthetic education of man" in Lukacs, Historie et conscience de class (Education de minuit, collection "arguments"). Originally published in 1875.
   
   
2. A very funny novel about a woman who chooses freedom after 65 is Constance Beresford Howe's The Book of Eve (New York: Avon Books, 1973).
   
   
3. See, for example, Wischnewski, M., Making Sense of Humor, Gender and Power: Implications for Adult Learners (1989). Unpublished doctoral dissertation. O.I.S.E., University of Toronto.
   
   
4. Belenky, et. al. Women's Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice, and Mind. New York: Basic Books, 1986.
   
   
5. Spender, D. Women of Ideas and What Men Have Done to Them. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982.
   
   
6. For information on the Raging Grannies, who rage and sing about contemporary social injustices, write Jean McLaren, R.R. #2, Suite 22, Comp.B, Gabriola Island, B.C. VOR 1X0.