The concept of Getting "Out"

Most of the games that we played as kid, had this concept of getting "out". Remember the time when I used to dread during hide and seek, and never wanted to get out. Getting "out" meant you are not good  enough, it meant kind of punishment. Also in many cases "out" meant staying outside for rest of the game while others played. I used to hate the games period in my school because most guys would play cricket, and me not being that good always ended up sitting half the time on the bench.  And I hardly know of any of my friends/siblings who did not hate getting out. Infact just to prove that we were "notout" fights used to spring between the best of buddies. 

But you have ever wondered why this concept is there. Is it to make us competitive? Is it to prepare everyone for the race that children would face as they grow up?

This was the question that was asked in one of the Games workshop organized by Dream a Dream. And I really found it interesting, because all the games we learnt in the workshop did not have the concept of getting "out". They were just fun games. 

Let me describe one game, The name of game is "Simon Says"

In this game everyone stands.  There is one conductor of the game. So if the conductor says, "Simon says dance", then everyone has to dance, if conductor says "Simon says run" everyone has to run. But if the conductor just says "run" you dont have to run, because simon did not say to run. In short you have to follow anything what 'Simon says' and nothing else.

If you are caught doing the wrong thing, you then you  have to come out in the center and conduct the game. 

Not you may aruge that this game also have a concept of getting "out". But I just found that there was suble different. In this game "out" did not mean punishment, it only meant that it was more fun. Because even I wanted to be a conductor and make people do weird things. Say like, "Simon says, pick your nose".. :).  

So when I played the game I could see that most participants did not want to get "out" because they did not want to be seen as "dumb", but at the same time, most of them did not mind getting "out", because they were having loads of fun conducting the game. 

The idea of workshop was to play games with children and yet not to make some children feel left out. All the games were woven around this idea. And I really liked the workshop not only because I had fun, but also because I really found this entire idea very thought provoking.

Dream a Dream has a document which describes all such kind of games that you can play with children, you can read it here.