Episode 254: Kevin Hood Gary, a professor of education at Valparaiso University, on his book Why Boredom Matters (February 15, 2023‪)‬ The Open Door

This week on The Open Door (February 15) we discuss the phenomenon of boredom. We’re especially interested in its effects on education. Our special guest is Kevin Hood Gary, a professor of education at Valparaiso University. He is co-founder of the North American Association for Philosophy of Education. The Association provides a forum for scholars working at the intersection of philosophy and educational theory. Prof. Gary is the author of Why Boredom Matters: Education, Leisure, and the Quest for a Meaningful Life (Cambridge, 2022).

Among the questions we will ask are the following.

1. Prof. Gary, Kevin if we may, could you please tell us a bit about yourself and how you came to Valparaiso?
2. Just what counts as boredom, and why is it a problem for teachers and students?
3. Might the experience of boredom in fact serve to prepare students for the boredom of the workplace?
4. Are there strategies for dealing with boredom that don’t really work very well?
5. Is there a connection between boredom and despair?
6. How does Kierkegaard address boredom?
7. Does leisure, rightly engaged in, offer a cure for boredom?
8. What’s the difference between “time off” and leisure?
9. Any thoughts on G.K. Chesterton’s surmise?
“Children have abounding vitality, because they’re in spirit fierce and free, and therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “do it again!” and the grown-up person does it again until they’re nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exalt in monotony, but perhaps God is strong enough to exalt in monotony. It’s possible that God says every morning “do it again” to the sun and every evening “do it again” to the moon. It may not be…necessity that makes all the daisies alike. It may be that God makes every daisy separately and has never gotten tired of making them. It may be that he has the eternal appetite of infancy for we have sinned and grown old and our Father is younger than we.”
10. What’s your next project?

Boredom is an enduring problem. In response, schools often do one or both of the following: first, they endorse what novelist Walker Percy describes as a 'boredom avoidance scheme,' adopting new initiative after new initiative in the hope that boredom can be outrun altogether, or second, they compel students to accept boring situations as an inevitable part of life. Both strategies avoid serious reflection on this universal and troubling state of mind. In this book, Gary argues that schools should educate students on how to engage with boredom productively. Rather than being conditioned to avoid or blame boredom on something or someone else, students need to be given tools for dealing with their boredom. These tools provide them with internal resources that equip them to find worthwhile activities and practices to transform boredom into a more productive state of mind. This book addresses the ways students might gain these skills.



Why Boredom Matters: Education, Leisure, and the Quest for a Meaningful Life: Gary, Kevin Hood: 9781108839983: Amazon.com: Books