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Notizen:


At the end of the 18th century the understanding of games was changed and

extended substantially. This change culminates in the famous words of Schiller: “Denn, um es endlich auf einmal herauszusagen, der Mensch spielt nur, wo er in voller Bedeutung des Worts Mensch ist, und er ist nur da ganz Mensch, wo er spielt [For, to finally speak it out at once, man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays]” (Schiller 1795). With this sentence, Schiller identified play as the area where people can become people, and thus as the central place for human development and education. Schiller discussed this place in the context of arts. He considers arts as a context where human activities have to be understood as play. A necessary condition for this context is freedom, not usefulness. For Schiller, this freedom means beeing free of being forced by other peoples reasoning (kings, priests etc.) and of being forced by nature (food, housing etc.). Being free from external forces opens up a room for creative actions, and these creative actions are by no means intended to be useful or profitable. In our context the important point is, that play as an existential aspect of human development fundamentally refers to human freedom. Due to this, it cannot be controlled from the outside, but only be done by people themselves. This changes the pedagogical perspective in contrast to Basedow. Basedow tried to control learning processes by creating games. With Schiller, playing is understood as an activity that cannot be controlled. Still, playing some sort of playground. A room where playing is actually possible is needed, but it cannot be forced that a room for playing games is actually used to play. With Schillers theory it is possible to understand teaching and learning as a game where people play with content - and the media that are used to express the content.