I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of “fun” recently. For most of us, “fun” is a concept that is reserved for our relaxation time outside of work or study. The things that we do aren’t considered “fun”, that’s “work”, and work cannot be fun (or if it is, it is usually in the process of not doing work). And yet, how does that happen? As kids, we have a lot of fun, and most people would say that is because there is less work. Yet often we are going to school for a similar amount of time to a full time job, and if you don’t accept that, the extra homework and so on would definitely push those numbers to equivalence. I think we actually started with things being fun, and somehow we lost our way, and we stopped having fun. If you keep reading, I’ll give some examples of how I think this is possible to fix.

Point 1: Learning starts out fun. Think back to primary school, when you first start school, and even before that. Learning is fun at that age! You learn how to put specific blocks in certain holes because that means 3D shapes are representations of 2D shapes. You learn how to write and we’re encouraged to be creative. You learn the basics of music by singing or playing recorder, and you learn basic maths by exploring how many apples someone has. Primary school education is bright, vibrant, and creative, which all helps to make the experience fun. I, like I’m sure many other students, was very excited to start school. I continued to enjoy it once I was there. I remember distinctly in year 3, we were doing a unit on space and our teacher dressed up the classroom in aluminium foil to make it resemble a space station. That blew the mind of young Josh, because it was like every day I got to go to a space station instead of school. But really, I knew school was also that space station. They were the same thing. And that was fun.

At some point, school stops being fun. This results in students being less interested and not sticking around, disrupting class or leaving altogether. I have no data to back this up, but I suspect this correlates with the idea that classes become less fun at some point in the school cycle. On one hand, I get it. It becomes far harder to teach higher level concepts in a way that is still fun and engaging. English classes, for instance, have a reputation for studying dusty old novels that are hard to read now. It is hard as a student to see the benefit of studying these texts and what they can teach us. In year 10, our class studied The Lord of the Rings as part of a year-long curriculum about mythologies, the Hero’s Journey, and traditional storytelling. This started a love of analysing popular culture for me, but it is also fun to have such a revered popular culture text to analyse in English. So I understand why other classes, who had to read books I can’t even recall now, struggled with their classes. Mathematics often has a student ask “how is this useful in real life?” It is hard, I admit, to see how maths connects through everything. This is until you try to higher study in almost any science and realise how much mathematics is involved. Calculus is the basis of economics, and algebra is the basis of computing. Sure, mathematics may not be useful in most times in everyday life, but the ability to logically figure out a complexly worded problem and solve it is.

Not only do we lose fun, we are also introduced to the double whammy that anything that is fun must be useless to society in some way. Society looks down on arts and the humanities because their direct value is not recognised. Someone studying art or being a professional artist is reduced to a caricature of “just painting” or “just writing” or “just performing”, reducing these professions to their most basic form, and crucially, one that recalls the days of fun that we used to have, because we did those exact things in primary school. We used to paint or write or perform for fun and to learn, but at some point some people get to keep doing that and others don’t. It is strange that sportspeople do not also get such vitriol, but perhaps sportspeople seem to have more direct impact on society: Australian sportspeople are well-known and watched by millions; while artworks are also consumed similarly, the numbers are more distributed than the 18 teams playing in an AFL week. But ultimately, science and engineering and computing and so on very obviously can generate revenue for a business. From a business perspective, it is harder to see how arts and humanities contribute. And business isn’t fun, but those are.

In my PhD research, I’ve completed a course on creative research methods, run by Associate Professor Shameem Black. We looked at how creative writing can be a research method and output – most obviously demonstrated by the works of Ursula K. Le Guin. We looked at how the people of the Marshall Islands navigated with only a map made from sticks. We also looked at food and cooking as a research method. These are all things that could be derided as being “fun”, and therefore not valuable as “real” research. Yet, on closer analysis, these things are all valuable and undoubtedly useful.

I think it’s important we rediscover fun. That we bring back practical learning, and continue it at schools beyond the primary school level. Kids should be shown how concepts do relate to the real world, not only keeping them in the sphere of the abstract. And we should encourage everyone – adults included – to rediscover that fun. I’ve met a lot of people who used to play musical instruments, or write short stories, or paint or draw or whatever creative outlet they had. Not only should we encourage this outside of the workplace, but I think it is worth exploring what this could look like in the workplace. Creative writing might lead to reports that are more interesting to read and – gasp – more fun! Musical instruments teach the importance of phrasing and performing. Painting and drawing help us to see the world in a different way and be better at finding connections. Are these not useful traits in the workplace?