The phenomenon of boredom in education

Получена: 24 декабря 2022 года

Опубликована: 24 декабря 2022 года

In everyday life, a person often meets a situation when certain activities seem boring and uninteresting, for example, cleaning up the room or washing dirty dishes, while reading a book or watching a movie, on the contrary, seem to be something exciting. Any activity that a person finds himself involved in can be appreciated through this opposition: interesting - boring. Education is no exception. Attthe samettime, whileгreferringtto pedagogical literature, what attracts attention is the fact that the word «boredom» itself is extremely rare and is often replaced by expressions such as «low motivation of students», «lack of cognitive interest», «low level of activity», «content, that which not corresponding to the level of personal development». The research gap in studying the phenomenon of boredom in educational practice is emphasized by many scholars. FFor example, P. Doherty argues that the majority of researchers, who state that boredom is one of the basic feelings of schoolchildren and students, do not describe the structure and interaction patterns that arise in educational experience, which cause boredom and an aversion to school subjects [3]. ЕEducation specialist T. Belton also notes that the relationship between education and the mood of boredom remains largely unexplored [1]. G. Breitenstein, who studied the phenomenon of boredom in the everyday life of schoolchildren, states the almost complete absence of special studies on this phenomenon in education [2].

Basically, in studies on issues of training and education, boredom is considered as such an emotional state from which deliverance should be sought. We do think, however, that our thinking on phenomenon of boredom should be oriented towards a deeper, existential level. In this case, we are faced with the question: whether the only problem is that students have lost interest, and the teacher has been unable to find a way to interest the students? We believe that to see boredom not only as negative, but also as positive phenomenon is of great importance. This would require to review of contemporary Heidegger’s analytics of human being.

In his work «The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics» Heidegger identifies several forms of boredom. The first form of boredom is characterized by Heidegger as «being bored by something» (gelangweiltwerden von etwas). This form of boredom is characterized by the desire of a person to drive away boredom by finding something that can hold one’s attention in order not to let the latter take hold of oneself. ЕExplaining whati is at stake, Heidegger’s example is that of being in an everyday situation, with well-known, banal forms of passing the time. One such situation is waiting at a railway station. Waiting at a гrailway station a person studiestthe train timetables and routes, counts the trees along the road, walks up and down, looks at the clock, etc., but despite all these attempts to wile away the time, the railway station nevertheless, is bringing up dead boring. An attempt to pass the time is an attempt to cope with a deep sense of emptiness that comes over a man when he turns out in such a situation. Heidegger stresses:i it’sгnottthe гrail stationi itself ortthe waiting people ortthe arriving trains, but the situation itself, in which they are placed that can give rise to boredom. Being unabletto give what a person wants most of all – to get on a train at the scheduled time to leave the station itself – this situation makes the person to fall into this being left empty that is emerging in boredom [7: 154-177].

The second, a more profound form of boredom, that Heidegger investigates is «boring oneself with something» ( das sichlangweilen bei etwas ). Heidegger’s example is that of being invited to a dinner party where the food is good, as is the music, and the guests are enjoying one other’s company etc. But once back home, I am struck by the thought that I was actually bored the entire evening. This is presumably an experience most of us have had at some time. The strange thing about this form of boredom is that I am unable to identify exactly what I was bored with. According to Heidegger, the strange thing about this form of boredom is that a man is unable to identify exactly what he was bored with at this party. And furthermore a man did not make a single attempt during the entire evening to while the time away; on the contrary, he gave time free rein. And yet it feels as if the whole evening was nothing more than just passing the time. At a closer scrutiny, the party as such was a mere pastime. The consciousness of boredom that sometimes strikes us afterwards should be understood, states Heidegger, as a consciousness ofan emptiness. According to Heidegger, the emptiness that crops up in this more profound form of boredom is the emptiness left by ‘our proper self’ [7:192-195].

So, how can the cross-section of Heidegger’s analytics of boredom be applied in the educational realm? Apparently, the situative boredom or «being bored by something», as defined by Heidegger, is the most common form of boredom in educational situations or learning environments. This is just one of many observations that are rather commonplace in the educational practice. «Anja scratches a little with her legs. It looks as if she wants to stretch them. Otherwise, she remains absolutely still in her seat. Anja continues to play with her hair. Then she begins to play around with an index card. Meanwhile, Heiko places a paperclip chain around his neck, and acts as if he (or someone else) were strangling him. He makes a face like someone dying. Anja yawns. Heiko continues to play with the paperclips; he turns them into an arm bracelet, and then puts it around his wrist. At 1:20 pm Anja asks me the time. Heiko holds the chain in front of his face, and starts making faces. By 1:21 pm it starts getting loud, the lesson is over. The students pack up. They wait for their next course to start…» [2: 93]. The signs are easy to interpret: Anja and Heiko are bored, and attempting to past the time away. They play with objects directly at their disposal such as cards, paperclips, pencils in order to take their minds off the lesson. Heiko and play with paperclips and cards, not because they like them that much, but rather because they must do something to occupy themselves, so as to divert their attention from the time that passes so slowly. Anja asks the time, in anticipation of the moment she has been waiting for, i.e., the end of the lesson. In the situation described, students are waiting for the lesson to end in a similar way a person is waiting at a railway station for his/her next train to depart. Why the learning environment is not meaningful, indifferent to the students, attempting to occupy themselves at the situation of the classroom lesson so as to kill time left until the end of the lesson can have different reasons. I Iti isiimportantttoкkeepiin mindttheffundamental position of Heidegger’s philosophy about the specifics of human existence. To define this specificity, Heidegger uses concept of Dasein and emphasizes that Dasein is an entity, «which in each case we ourselves are». That’s why the entity is revealed itself to Dasein in a certain way, i.e. not as a result of some kind of automatic, natural process, as for example the act of affecting the external things on the human senses, but only if an entity affects Dasein, i.e. turns out to be meaningful for it in its being. In this regard, education and learning activities should not be identified with a particular kind of learning, a transmission of information or knowledge from the educator to students, but should be interpreted and оorganized alsoa as theDprocess thatAiwould)open theAwide opportunities for any future meaningful educational experience of the participants in that process. If the educational practice ignores this fact in its most varied manifestations, then the student finds himself in a situation where he simply passes the time away (or «kill time»). Doesn’t student, as thrown being-in-the world and not even realizing why and what for he is here, see no reasons to stay-being held in the classroom other than external ones. The boredom that arises from dull and meaningless educational situation is as painful as being caught in a railway station waiting for the next train. In both cases “passing the time” is the only way out from the situation.

As already mentioned, «being bored by something» (g elangweiltwerden von etwas ) is the most common form of boredom in educational realm. But can we attest that this form of boredom is the only one? Whether there is a more profound form of boredom? As we recall, Heidegger finds a more subtle form of boredom –

Until now, we have been talking about two types of boredom, ignoring the third, so-called «profound boredom» (« est ist einem langweilig »). The profound form of boredom does not stem from anything specific. IIn the profound form of boredom I am not bored by the situation or by myself. This is impersonal boredom, when it is boring for one «not for me as me, not for you as you, not for us as us, but for one. Name, standing, vocation, role, age and fate as mine and yours disappear» [7: 217]. The peculiarity of this form of boredom is that it indicates specificity of the human being, that which Heidegger describes with the term Dasein . Dasein ,

ВОЛКОВА С. В. THE PHENOMENON OF BOREDOM IN EDUCATION // Studia Humanitatis Borealis. 2022. № 4. С. 25–30. however, has numerous meanings. I shall point the most essential one. The concept Dasein describes the being of the particular kind of entity that is the human being, which, in its being, is concerned with this being itself, and treats this being as a task. Dasein is confronted with a choice of one of its existing possibilities: to be ourselves (authentic mode of being) and not to be ourselves, not to choose, namely, to lose ourselves (inauthentic mode of being).

Thus, what is distinctive in a profound form of boredom, according to Heidegger, is that in profound boredom we exist in a field of proper possibilities to find ourselves, to be genuine. Following нHeidegger’s analysis of boredom, we can agree, that without experiencing profound boredom there is no self, no freedom, and Dasein (being-in-the-world) appears to be absent presence or presence-as-absent. Whereas in the first form of boredom we can turn away from it by passing the time so that we do not need to listen to it; and what is distinctive in the second form of boredom is that we don’t want to listen to it; and in the case with profound boredom we are «being compelled to listen, being compelled in the sense of that kind of compelling force which everything properly authentic about Dasein possesses, and which accordingly is related to Dasein’s innermost freedom» [7: 219]. It remains only to accept our boredom as attunement and «to let it be awake». So refusing our own mood in our efforts to meet the social norm, which is expressed in the warning «Do not give in to your mood!», creates the danger that we’ll lose us as ourselves and become only and first of all like others. The authentic being of a man is then lost, remains unseen. The concept of education as a place for the realization of one’s own existential projects correlates with Heidegger’s idea of the understanding of education formulated by Plato ( paideia ). The€essence of<« paideia », writes M. Heidegger, «doesn’t consist in merely pouring knowledge into the unprepared soul as if it were some container held out empty and waiting. On the contrary real education lays hold of the soul itself and transforms it in it entirety by first of all leading us to the place of our essential being and accustoming us to it» [6: 350]. The “result” of such an education will be,iinttheI languagecof Heidegger, «that everything that has been heretofore manifest to human beings, as well as the way in which it has been manifest, gets transformed» [6: 351].

So, based on the above, we believe that it is the mood of profound boredom that is the very “space” in educational practice, being immersed to which the student gets a chance to meet him as himself. In this regard, such understanding of the potential power and use of boredom is evident in a notable and rare instance of its recognition by an English educational institution – a private school in the UK, founded by Alexander Sutherland Neill. Summerhill’s current policy statement says it aims «... to allow children to experience the full range of feelings…Apparently negative consequences such as boredom, stress, anger, disappointment and failure are a necessary part of individual development…» [8]. It is noteworthy that students of the school, although having motivation; students acknowledged their experience of boredom but also appreciate it as an impulse for self-change. Engagement, on the contrary, is perceived as the factor curtailing the potential for change or development. The latter circumstance is not accidental. The thing is that, on the one hand, a tight timetable is considered nowadays to be the true measure of a man’s success and his sustainability and thus it is always highly appreciated by the society. And on the other hand, modern psychological studies reveal that children today are too busy, they have little or no free time. Children are prevented, more precisely, taken away from being bored (and they feel it and even proud of it). Thus the child's boredom is often recognized as an incapacity and is usually denied as an opportunity. This i is Ilargely cdue tto tthe ccurrently widespread entertainment industry and social stereotype, according to which the predisposition to boredom is regarded as a negative phenomenon. Being under the influence of these factors, parents tend to fill children’s time and supply much needed childcare when kids are out of school. It is one of the most oppressive demands of modern society that the child should be interested, rather than take time to find what interests him.

Meanwhile, over-scheduling children is unnecessary and could ultimately keep kids from discovering what truly interests them. Under total engagements the kid would have difficulty in finding something that is his or her own because it could be so beyond what the parents have already planned. In order to understand what he or she is interested in a child should have times when there is «nothing to do». In this regard, equally convincing is the L. Fry’s observation that «children need to learn how to be bored in order to motivate themselves to get things done. Being bored is a way to make children self-reliant» [5].

In summary, let’s draw our attention to one of the other core ideas. Dasein is an entity which does not just occur among other entities, but is ontically distinguished by the fact that in its very being, that being is an issue for it. Dasein cares for its most authentic ability to be. In this regard, it is not enough to create the culture or knowledge intensive environments for the child. The existential Ilongingffortthe €education ofCone’s selfi is equally, if not more, important. Actually, this is the main goal of education: not to «give» a child an education, but to breathe into the child a desire for education, to wake up in him a longing for his absent «I». TheI latteri is hardly possible without the student’s experiencing the profound boredom. 1Thuscone oftthe mainiimperativescof

ВОЛКОВА С. В. THE PHENOMENON OF BOREDOM IN EDUCATION // Studia Humanitatis Borealis. 2022. № 4. С. 25–30. the philosophy of education is to allow the feeling of profound boredom to stay awake, and not to put it to sleep by various forms of entertaining and playful activities.