Gioco e lavoro nella teoria pedagogica di John Dewey: una chiave esplicativa delle odierne fughe dal lavoro?

In 1910/1933 John Dewey wrote How We Think, a book that continues to be thought provoking. His analysis of the relationship between play and work can help explaining contemporary social emergencies such as the ‘great resignation’ and ‘quiet quitting’. Dewey argued that play and work (wrongly kept separated by some approaches in education) are both characterized by reflective thinking, means-to-ends orientation and creativity to solve problems and yield results. In Dewey’s times, the crisis of work could be seen as cognitive deprivation of work, with all creative and vital aspects left to play and other activities. Today’s crisis of work could be co-caused by the opposite process, i.e., by the spread of cognitive overload situations, disabling and frustrating reflective thinking and trapping the person in a series of situations with no solution. Some data confirm such hypothesis, complementary to more relational and moral ones.