Should learning always be fun?

I have had some really interesting discussions with a number of colleagues recently about whether or not "entertaining" classes in order to make material engaging is a good thing to do. If one manages to be entertaining, then obvious benefits could involve better motivated and more interested students - and this is undoubtedly why we try to bring a bit of showmanship to the classroom.

Students having fun - but have they learnt the maths?

However, some have rightly asked whether this can be a bit of a deception. Much learning, particularly when done independently, has no "bells, whistles, tricks or fireworks" driving the experience: it is sheer hard graft and the best motivation will be a serious interest in the material itself. In addition to this, the fact that there is a very well commented upon culture of "immediate gratification" - driven by the Internet, Social Networking, Computer Gaming and a generally fast pace of life - then should we not be concerned that the entertaining teacher is pandering to a dumbed down version of learning?

This is a particularly important question when we consider what a student actually learns when things are made more palatable and easier to learn. Perhaps memory retention of detailed concepts is higher when the learning process has been more challenging. I have often been struck that some "all singing all dancing" lessons I have taught get very good immediate feedback, but when I test the learning later, they remember that "they enjoyed the lesson" but not necessarily the content of the lesson itself. Conversely, lessons that I thought were too hard, and seemed messy - with students leaving the room looking like they wanted bad things to happen to me - later proved to have worked effectively in quality knowledge being learnt and retained. So, reflecting on my own experience, the thesis holds.


So, should we be more boring?

A categoric no to this. I still think that it is our job to present learning in engaging ways, but that engaging ought not be substituted for "fun" (although fun will have its place - particularly when occurring naturally - we should not actively seek it as the primary purpose of a lesson and think that it will make students learn better). Trying this out directly, I decided to take my Post-GCSE 4th Form set, who had three lessons left which were not going towards any qualification, and do some A-Level Philosophy work. Why not? They are bright, interesting young people and have the ability to think at a high level. Whilst there may have been a few calls for "films" and "Sir, play us a song" (yes, part of my entertainment repertoire is to write and sing songs...very badly), the 4th Formers got stuck in and did some high quality thinking about how much free will we might have, and why some argue that we have none.

Ultimately, we should not apologise for rigour, the intrinsic value of our subjects and the need to work hard at learning.

My conclusion to this question of "entertainment" in the classroom at the moment is that we should have really high academic expectations of all our students in the classroom, and not think that they need to be entertained in order to learn; this is doing them a disservice. That said, happiness and humour are vital components of good relationships, so we should also be cautious of teaching strings of lessons that do not allow breathing space; obvious progress (it can't be very hard all of the time, or too hard any of the time); and - at the right moment - simply allowing ourselves to have a laugh with the great young people we teach.