Performing Childlore and Gender Rolesin a Public School in Metro Manila*
Gerry Lanuza**G

enerally, children’s folklore or “childlore” refers to “those traditions that are learned, and performed by children without the influence of adult supervision or formal instruction” (Grider, 1997, page123). The earliest scholars of children’s folklore were interested in preserving what they regarded as the dying traditions of childhood and focused ongames, especially games with a spoken or sung component (Ronstrom, 1997,
page 130).1
In the present study, I connect childlore and children’s play with theformation of gender identity.
Given the fact that gender issues are very much manifest in early childhood interactions, the present study is an attempt to contribute to the fieldof gender studies and folklore by focusing on the play of schoolchildren.
Klintberg gives the most succinct definition of folklore: “traditional culturalforms that are communicated between individuals through words or actions
and tend to exist in variation” (quoted in Klein, 1998, page 332). This definition embraces folklores common among children. Although children’s play
and games have been one of the earliest materials that folklorists had studied(Beresin, 1997; Grider, 1997; Sutton-Smith, 1968), the folklore shared amongchildren was not often seriously studied by folklorists (Sutton-Smith, 1970).2
The primary objective of this study, however, is not just to add to the growing literature on the subject, but to look at the persistent, unacknowledged‘symbolic violence’ in the performance and transmission of gender roles inchildren’s plays. Bourdieu (1990) contrasts symbolic violence with the overt
violence of the usurer or the ruthless master; symbolic violence is gentle,
invisible violence, unrecognized as such, chosen as much as undergone, thatof trust, obligation, personal loyalty, hospitality, gifts, debts, piety, in a word,of all the virtues honored by the ethic of honor. (Bourdieu, 1990, page 127).
*This article first appeared in the Social Science Diliman (December 2011) 7:2, 49-69, andis reprinted here with permission.
**Gerry M. Lanuza is an Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology, Universityof the Philippines, Diliman.

243

244

H u m a n R i g h t s E d u c at i o n i n A s i a - Pa c i f i c

This study focuses on children’s play involving rhymes and actions toinvestigate the gender reproduction in the performance of play by children
in a public primary school in Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines.
Schools are one of the major institutions where secondary socialization
occurs. Considering the school as a site for studying folklore has not been
typically appealing to most anthropologists and folklorists,3 yet there are a
few studies that investigate the oral transmission of childlore in the school
setting (e.g., Barnett and Kruidenier, 1981; Berkovits, 1970; Gulliford, 1992;
Mechling, 1997; Mergen, 1997). As schools seek to instruct children in certain values and beliefs of the community, they are at the same time sites for
production and reproduction of childlore. By sequestering children of thesame age in one place, the school provides a fertile ground for children to
create their own lore, to share their common symbols and meanings, andto transmit these meanings and symbols to others (Bruner, 1960). Throughpeer association, children learn to anticipate their future roles within andoutside the school setting. Peer association produces networks of young
people who share a more or less well-defined subculture or way of life. It
is through this network that children can create their own lore and evendistinctive ways of behaving as children of the same social set (McDowell,1999).
En-Gendering Folklore and Deconstructing Gender in PlaySocialization is not innocent. It positions the subject into the existing competing discursive fields arranged along gender axes. The individual only becomes a sexed subject through identification with a discursive field. This isalso the thrust of the Lacanian ‘sexuation of the subject’. In this view, there
is no pre-given subject prior to its entry into the symbolic order. The sexed
subject is a position within a given symbolic field (Zizek, 1992). Yet, as feminists and Marxists have pointed out, discourses compete with each otherwithin a given social field. Individuals, therefore, are both the site and subject of discursive struggle.
In a society constituted hierarchically along gender inequalities, themore powerful discourse reproduces itself through the constitution of thesubject especially during the formative period of subject-making. And as
George Herbert Mead, the father of symbolic interactionism, has shown,one of the most powerful arenas where the subject’s identity emerges isPerforming Childlore and Gender Roles in a Public School in Metro Manila

245

through play and games. As the child enters into the adult world, play andgames become powerful rituals where children learn the “normal” subjectposition relative to their sexed identity. Hence the importance of childlore.
Today, social constructionism, which defines gender as a form of discourse, is the ascending dominant paradigm in analyzing gender issues (seeWeedon, 1987).4 Prescinding or detaching from Foucault’s poststructuralist
analysis of text and Derrida’s deconstruction, contemporary post-feminists
have shifted the focus of analysis from anatomy and biology to the powerof discourses to create and sustain gender-biased stories and narratives.5
According to the social constructionist paradigm,
The fixing of meaning in society and the realization of the implications of a particular version of meanings in forms of socialorganization and the distribution of social power rely on the discursive constitution of subject positions from which individuals
actively interpret the world and by which they are themselves
governed. (Weedon, 1987, page 97)
It must be emphasized here that contemporary poststructuralist feminists introduce the notion of the body as necessary touchstone for the analysis of subjectivity. Discourses operate within the body and shape the body.
Therefore, to study the discursive constituting of gendered identities, onemust locate it within the body (Schiebinger, 2000). This emphasis on the
body is all the more interesting considering that children’s plays always involve the body. The young and fragile bodies of children are the primary
locus by which gender scripts and other mnemonic devices are imprinted. Studying childlore, therefore, essentially presents a dilemma. That is, it
should recognize the intricate process by which sexuation through childlore
is not a simplistic process of creating docile sexed bodies of children.
Game versus Play, the dilemmatic meaning of gender in play
For the present study, the concepts of ‘free play’ (paidea) and ‘play game’ (ludus), originally analyzed by Vygotsky (1992), are used as a frame to analyze
childlore. Both play and games have rules, so what is the main difference
between them? Callois employs the term paidea to refer to “prodigality ofphysical or mental activity which has no immediate useful objective, nor defined objective, and whose only reason to be is based in the pleasure experi-

246

H u m a n R i g h t s E d u c at i o n i n A s i a - Pa c i f i c

enced by the player” (see Frasca, 2003, page 223). Ludus, on the other hand,is a term suggested by Gonzalo Frasca to refer to a particular form of playthat is “organized under a system of rules that defines a victory or a defeat,a gain or a loss” (Frasca, 1999). Usually, play activities are associated withchildren, while games are thought to be more adult activities. The reason isthat games have a strong social component, and young children need first to
be socialized in order to perform these kinds of activities. After that period(approximately age 7 onwards), games start to be played.
Turning now to contemporary developmental study of childhood, moststudies on children and play had been dominated either by the behaviorist
paradigm (e.g., Pellegrini & Galda, 1991), or the cognitivist tradition championed by Jean Piaget (1962). The earliest attempt to analyze play from aphenomenological point of view is the pioneering study of Johan Huizinga(1950). Huizinga gives the following definition of play:...play...[is] a free activity standing quite consciously outside ‘ordinary life’ as being ‘not serious,’ but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connectedwith no material interest. And no profit can be gained by it. It
proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and spaceaccording to fixed rules and in orderly manner. It promotes theformation of social groupings which tend to surround themselves with secrecy and to stress their difference from the common world by disguise or other means. (1950, page 13)
Based on this definition, Huizinga enumerates four fundamental characteristics of play. First, play is free. One engages in play voluntarily. Second,play is non-ordinary. Players step out of the real life into a temporary sphereof activity that is a product of make-believe. It lies outside the immediate
quest for satisfaction of life. Third, play is staged within certain limits oftime and space, yet the moment it is enacted, it is transmitted and becomesa tradition. Fourth, it creates order, it is order; it has rules that captivate theplayers and controls them. Fifth, play develops a play community that develops an aura of secrecy (Huizinga, 1950, pages 8-13).
Like rituals, children’s play is performed in privileged spaces and time,and sets off from the periods and areas reserved for work and study. Playtransforms the space and time around it by setting itself off from the rest of
the world.

Performing Childlore and Gender Roles in a Public School in Metro Manila

247

During play, children are relatively self-absorbed in the performanceitself and suspend the spatio-temporal dimensions of the outside world. It
creates a separate frame (Goffman, 1972). Or, as Huizinga says, play “is rather a stepping out of real life into a temporary sphere of activity with a disposition all of its own” (1950, page 8). As Vygotsky points out, in play, action
is subordinated to roles. Playing for fun serves as an exclusionary boundary
against those who refuse to play.6 Play is a way of ‘framing’, of delineating
what is “acceptable” from what is not (Goffman, 1972).7
Huizinga’s phenomenological analysis leaves hanging the account of interaction among children themselves and how such activities constitute theindividual identities of children. In short, there is a need to look for a theory
that can explain how play itself creates selves and minds among children.
Or, to put it differently, how play creates and positions subjects in relation to
culture and society. This missing dimension is supplied by the revolutionary
theory of Lev Vygotsky and George Herbert Mead (1967). Vygotsky’s views
veer away from attributing the character of play to the psychological anddevelopmental nature of the child.8 His analysis of play is based on sociohistorical analysis of the genesis of the mind and individual development.
Central to Vygotsky’s sociocultural analysis of the mind is that people’s
higher mental functions are derived mostly from social context. Secondly,
these higher mental functions are mediated by language as a tool for communication (Wertsch, 1991, page 21).
One cannot abstract the meaning of a sign from the social context
where it is used (Wertsch, 1991, page 29).
Vygotsky, therefore, conceives of play as a “leading edge in the child’sdevelopment because through it [the child] begins to sever the direct connection between a thing, a situation, and an action” (Lee, 1985, page 90).
What is important in Vygotsky’s analysis is that in play, the child learns tosubordinate her impulses to the semiotic meanings of objects rather than tothe objects themselves (Lee, page 90).
Newman and Holzman (1993) have rightly proposed that the proper
reading of Vygotsky’s sociocultural analysis of play is to see it as contradictory or ‘dilemmatic’:9 On the one hand, play is revolutionary activity insofar
as it involves imaginary situations and is concerned with meaning-making
which is often novel and creative. On the other hand, play is also constraining. During play, the players lose their selves and are subordinated to therules and semiotic meanings of the objects.

248

H u m a n R i g h t s E d u c at i o n i n A s i a - Pa c i f i c

This is the same with the observation of George Herbert Mead who,
like Vygotsky, realizes that in play children create imaginary roles, yet theseroles subordinate children to rules. From this role-taking the self emerges.
Children get together to “play Indian.” This means that thechild has a certain set of stimuli which call out in itself the responses that they would call out in others, and which answer toan Indian. In the play period the child utilizes his own responses
to these stimuli which he makes use of in building a self. The
response, which he has a tendency to make to these stimuli, organizes them. He plays that he is, for instance, offering himself
something, and he buys it; he gives a letter to himself and takes
it away; he addresses himself as a parent, as a teacher; he arrests himself as a policeman. He has a set of stimuli which callout in himself the sort of responses they call out in others. He
takes this group of responses and organizes them into a certain
whole. Such is the simplest form of being another to one’s self.
It involves a temporal situation. The child says something in one
character and responds in another character, and then his responding in another character is a stimulus to himself in the firstcharacter, and so the conversation goes on. A certain organizedstructure arises in him and in his other which replies to it, andthese carry on the conversation of gestures between themselves.
(Mead, 1964, page 151)
If play is a process of identity formation, then one must be attentive tothe specificity of the gendered character of such process.10 Definitely, play isa means of transmitting and creating culturally defined roles, roles that are
specific to each category of people who learn them. Like any other activity,
play also structures the sexual character of identity formation. To play is toenter and participate into the ongoing narrative of life. Children gain accessto the adult world via the mediation of the discourses contained within theplay. This living of narrative is a way of inducting children to the adult life.
Play positions the child within the space and time of the social narrative.
Play is a world in itself. It is only during play that children become soabsorbed with an activity; similar to what Victor Turner (1986) calls “flow”.
Yet, while it becomes a self-contained activity, an imaginary world of
make-believe, the freedom of activity within play is not absolute. For the
freedom in play is already pre-defined by existing discursive rules and meanings (Newman & Holzman, 1993).

Performing Childlore and Gender Roles in a Public School in Metro Manila

249

As pointed out earlier, the sociocultural analysis being pursued here
considers the relationship between play and gender as a dilemmatic situation: the interplay of gendered meanings in play is contradictory and ambiguous. In play, children, to some degree, freely create their own situationand perform imaginary roles. Yet they do so only within the existing competing discourses already in place. Now, how do children construct and resist received discourses about gender? This is the main question this paper
explores as a study of the relationship between schooling and how genderroles are reproduced through the process of childlore performance.
Methodology
This study was conducted in a public primary school in Quezon City.
Participant observation was used among the schoolchildren at play outside
the classroom. The ages of these schoolchildren ranged from 10- to 12-yearsold (all Grade 3). Video recording of performance through camera11 was employed. Active interviews were conducted among the children, both active
participants who were instructed to perform the chant play and non-participants who were not informed about the observation process while playing.
Two classes were also instructed to submit a written account of their‘plays’ as assignment. This included lyrics and verses, the rules of play, thegoal of play, who can play, and the reason for playing. The assignments weregathered and compared to come up with the final version, the ‘official format’ of the play. The data interpreted came from four sources: text, performance, participant observation, and interviews. In all, I collected five ‘plays’with chants and rhymes. They became the object of my analysis.
The best way to study childlore, especially plays involving chants andrhymes, would be to observe them in a natural setting. Unfortunately, theseplays are not allowed inside the classroom. For the duration of my study, I
failed to watch children playing these activities in the natural environment,
so I had to ask them to perform these plays for me. The lyrics of the songs
during the plays have different versions, so I crosschecked the ‘official’ lyrics
by comparing different versions and asking the children themselves whichis the ‘right’ one. There were variations in the spelling and some semanticaldifferences.

250

H u m a n R i g h t s E d u c at i o n i n A s i a - Pa c i f i c

Findings, Analysis and Interpretationa. Significance of Play in the Everyday Life of Children
As discussed above, childlore can be free play or play game. In either
case, these plays can be played by an individual or by a group. The children
would engage in free play either as individuals or as a group especially when
the teacher was not around. These individualized free plays also included
the following: stomping on the table, writing on the board, looking outside
near the window, and making faces.
The temporal dimension and spatial location of these free plays are very
specific. First, they are performed inside the classroom. Second, they aredone in times when the disciplinary gaze of the teacher is absent. The children engaged in playing to get rid of classroom boredom. In my fieldwork, I
often overheard pupils commenting, “Ang tagal naman ng oras” [time is soslow]. Once, when I observed a class with no teacher, a pupil asked me whattime it was. Then she calculated how much time was left before dismissal.
As groups, they also engage in play games like mataya-taya [tag], taguan [hide-and-seek], and, the most common, habulan [‘running after eachother’/tag]. Group free play includes tuksuhan (teasing). Some children dogroup free play even during class time in the playground, but never inside
the classroom.
The fact that there are spaces and time for these plays means thatwhen children engage in play, they are not completely without constraints.
Consequently, these constraints also have some bearing on the way children
relate to rules and prohibitions.
The group game plays are usually done outside the classroom. The playground is the site of these plays and is designated as a space for playing.
Insofar as the playground is a site for multiple activities, it is a contested
space for demarcating play and non-play activities. When I asked somechildren why organized free plays cannot be done inside the classroom, thechildren simply laughed at my question. These rough plays are not allowedin the class! It is because the teacher says so. The children are therefore
very excited if the teacher decides to let them play outside. In short, withina prescribed and given space for play, children also exercise their playful
expressions.
In play, children invest their desire in play itself. To use the Lacanian
vocabulary, play itself becomes the ‘objet petit a’, the object-cause of desire.

Performing Childlore and Gender Roles in a Public School in Metro Manila

251(As such, play is opposed to work.) Children say they play “because it is fun.”All other reasons are subordinated to this end. Some typical responses byboth boys and girls when they were asked why they play are: “Wala lang,kasi nakakaenjoy pag-bored ako” [There’s no reason why I play, just because
it’s enjoyable when I’m bored], “Gusto ko lang maglaro“ [I just like to play],“Masaya kasi” [Because it’s fun].
In my interviews, most children said they prefer more animated or
action-oriented play. They equate the pleasure they derive from play with
its excitement. Excitement means more action and laughter. And children
usually prefer their popular ‘plays’ rather than the pedagogical ‘plays’ taught
by their teachers.
Girl: Pangit kasi yong “Pass the Message” kasi tahimik lang laruin, di masaya. Di din ako nananalo at napipikon ako. [“Pass the
Message” is not such a nice game because it is quietly played, so
it’s less fun. And I get annoyed because I never win.]
Girl: Mas gusto namin ng maraming action kasi mas masaya.
Pag konti lang di masyadong masaya. [We prefer more action
because it’s more fun.]
Girl: Minsan lang namin nilalaro ang mga tinuro ni teacher kasi
mahirap... [We rarely play things the teacher taught because it’sharder.]b. Textual Analysis of the Rhymes
In the following analysis, I only focus on the most common chantsthat are widely known among children. The most common chants include
themes about the family and the roles of its members, and about intimate
relationships and love. They may incorporate traditional folk songs.
Chant about the family:
Nanay, Tatay, gusto ko ng tinapay [Mother, Father, I want bread]Ate, Kuya, gusto ko ng kape [Older Sister, Older Brother, I wantcoffee]Lahat ng gusto ko ay susundin ninyo [All that I want you must
follow]
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7- 8 - 9 - 10
10 - 9 - 8 - 7 - 6 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2- 1
This free play is one of the shortest chants with clapping hands that I
recorded. It is played among four players. There is no ultimate winner; it is252

H u m a n R i g h t s E d u c at i o n i n A s i a - Pa c i f i c

played simply for the fun of chanting and playing it. This play chant is very
popular among the girls. Boys tend to have reservations playing this playchant and, when they do participate, they often disrupt the play.
In chanting this, the players seem to assume the position of a bunso or
the youngest child in the family. As revealed in this play, in Filipino culture
the youngest child is often the center of attention (Dalisay, 1983; Guthrie,1961) to the point that, as expressed in the lyrics, the youngest has a muchstronger power to demand and so reverses the hierarchical power relationsin the family.
The child capitalizes on his/her helplessness and vulnerability. The
overtone here is that of demanding total submission of the adult membersof the family to the caprice of the child. The demands in the first part of thechant are quite ‘legitimate’: the child only asks for bread and coffee. Yet the
youngest child may also demand whimsical objects as implied in the phrase“lahat ng gusto ko” [everything I want]. This last part is also, to use a deconstructionist term, ‘undecidable’ (Culler, 1986). Because the unconditional
demand is introduced by legitimate demands (food), it seems to suggest thatthe child merely demands legitimate things.
Play About Love and Relationship: BC apple
Lemon juice
Tell me the name of your sweetheart
For example
I love you...
“BC Apple” can be played by two or more persons where the remaining
two players will have to settle between themselves who will be the winner.
They do this through the traditional rock-paper-scissors hand game.
The ending of the game adds more to fun to the game. The lyrics of thischant do not rhyme. It is short, yet the melody jibes well with the body
movement and the hand movements of the participants. It is interesting tonote that the lyrics are in English and the concepts are about America. First,“apple” stands for the American way of life. Since American colonialism,
Filipinos have equated the apple with what is American. “Lemon juice” isalso American, which must be contrasted with the local citrus variety ofkalamansi. And third, the romantic love component is also American, even
Hollywood-like.

Performing Childlore and Gender Roles in a Public School in Metro Manila

253

While the lyrics are about a very intimate theme, the children do nottake them seriously. The attention of the players is focused on the fun ofchanting and playing and not on the meanings associated with the lyrics.
While children are seriously playing the game, they also are able to bracket
the meanings and real life implications of the lyrics. Taking the lyrics literally would lead them to reveal their romantic infatuations. By playing thisplay game, children are able to discuss openly issues related to intimate relationships, without disapproving adults.
Chant about gambling and parents:
B-I-N-G-O
Tatay mong nag-Bingo [Your father who played Bingo]
Binato ng beyntesingko [Had a 25-centavo coin thrown at him]
Sabi ng Nanay “Bingo!” [Said Mother: “Bingo!”]Through this play, the children form an image of a parents’ quarrel involving Bingo. The lyrics reflect the popularity of Bingo games and othergambling activities among Filipino adults (Locsin, 2001; Nery, 2003) especially during fiestas (community celebrations) and community parties. The
mother’s frustration with the father who plays Bingo is expressed in throwing a twenty-five centavo coin at him.
As expressed in the lyrics, which are quite short, this play is a comic
sketch of ‘typical’ parents’ behavior. Yet, while self-absorbed in play, the children subordinate or bracket the practical meaning of the lyrics. As a girlexplained (in response to the question “Does your father mind when you
chant ‘Bingo’?”), her father would not mind this because “He knows that it’s
not him” (since her father does not play Bingo).
In my observation of children’s performance of play, the enjoyment children get from playing also derives from the experience of play as liminality.12
This is borne out by the reaction of children to my question on whether theytake the lyrics seriously. All of them simply laughed at my question. As an
11-year-old girl told me: “Di naman po kami seryoso.” [‘We are not serious.’]
Yet, they know what the Bingo game is. In fact, some of them told me that
their parents play Bingo. And interestingly, some of the children had played
Bingo. To those who told me that their parents play Bingo, I also asked themwhether their parents quarrel about the game. Most of those who said theirparents play Bingo said that it was their mothers who often played Bingo.

254

H u m a n R i g h t s E d u c at i o n i n A s i a - Pa c i f i c

The lyrics, therefore, are a reversal of this state of affairs. Children make funof this game while being aware of its reversal. It follows from this that play is
a fluid process13 in which players constantly frame their activity, ever watchful of intrusion and the flow of space and time outside play.
c. Transmission: The Politics of Learning
The children’s playlore had been transmitted primarily through family
members (sisters and brothers) and relatives (pinsan or cousins). Many girls
stated that they learned from their elder sisters.
It may also be transmitted from neighbors, or through classmates andfriends in the school. It is quite interesting to note that learning these plays
was not only through oral transmission but also through mass media. As
one boy narrated, “Nanunood lang po ako sa TV. Tapos pinag-aaralan ko.”
[I just watch TV and I study how to play it.] It is interesting that the “significant others” (immediate family members and clique) are primary agentsof transmitting the childlore, but also that the mass media are not far behind. In fact, the imagery in the lyrics of the aforementioned childlore ismostly derived from what they watch on television (about Bingo, apple, andromantic relations). Mass media become the source of the lyrics while theperformance and transmission themselves are lodged in the peer and family
members. Here the mass media play a vital part in the politics of gendered
constitution of child’s subjectivity. Meanwhile, the practical materializationof these scripts and imagery resides in the face-to-face interactions among
the children.
d. Sexuation in Play
Among the children I observed and interviewed, there seems to be an
emerging play community that is defined along gender lines although this is
not yet clear and distinct among the children. In general, for instance, girls
perceive boys to be more rowdy during play than girls. Hence, most girls
prefer fellow girls for a play group:
Girl: Mas gusto ko mga babae rin kasi naiilang ako at inaasar ako ng mga kaklase ko [pag kalaro ko mga lalaki]. Mas makulit ang mga lalaki kasi nanggugulo ng laro. Magulo maglaro atkung anu-ano ang ginagawa. Mas makukulit ang mga lalaki,nandadaya sila. [I prefer to play with girls also because I feel
uncomfortable and get teased when I play with boys. Boys arePerforming Childlore and Gender Roles in a Public School in Metro Manila

255

more pesky and try to break up the play. They do not keep orderand do all kinds of things, and they cheat.]
Girl: Pag naglalaro kami tinutulak kami [ng mga lalaki].
[When we play with them, they (the boys) push us.]
Boy: Sa room mismo kami naglalaro. Babae ang madalasna nagyaya ng laro. Mas maingay ang mga lalaki maglaro. [Weplay in the classroom. Girls are usually the ones that initiate play.
Boys tend to be noisy when they play.]
Girl: Mas madalas maglaro ang mga lalaki pag wala si
mam. [Boys play more often when the teacher is away.]
From the foregoing, play may be said to belong to the feminine logic
of desire in the Lacanian formula of sexuation. The feminine desire has no
exception. It has access to jouissance or enjoyment beyond the purely symbolic or phallic order. This implies that girls tend to obtain pleasure fromplay chants beyond what the boys could imagine and experience. This may
also explain why girls tend to be more expressive and love to play more thanboys.
Girls tend to identify more with the play than the boys. In many performances of the plays involving chants and rhymes that I observed, usually theboys only partially identify with the game and therefore they can also easily
dissociate themselves from the play. This is borne out by the fact that theboys tend to be non-serious during the plays. The boys easily break out fromthe play and they refuse to follow the accepted rules. In two cases, a boy
broke up from the play circle and walked away. These behaviors often annoy
the girls but the girls often request the boys to come back. In other cases,
the girls even warn the boys: Hoy, ‘wag nyo namang babuyin yong laro. Kung
ayaw nyo, wag na lang kayo sumali. [Hey, don’t mess up the play. You betternot join if you’re not serious with it.] The boys simply ignore these pleas.
Insofar as the frame of play is fun, it is unimaginable for children in theplay that some children do not enjoy playing or refuse to play. It is to reject
the frame of play. Said one child: Sa mga di naglalaro sinasabi naming “dikayo magiging masaya” [To those who do not play, we tell them “you won’t
have fun”].
In this sense, the girls see play as an end, while boys see it more as competitive exercise, a means to reward.14 By breaking away from the play circle
and messing up with the play, the boys tend to display their indifference tothe end of the play.

256

H u m a n R i g h t s E d u c at i o n i n A s i a - Pa c i f i ce. Romantic Love in Liminality
In Grade 3, (around ages 8-10) there is already keen awareness amongsome children about intimate relationships with the opposite sex. In the interviews, some girls disclosed to me that they avoid playing with particularboys because others see it as a form of courtship or of being already in a
relationship.
During one of my group interviews, the group identified a boy and girlcouple, so I asked them if they play together. The identified girl said:
Girl: Ayaw ko pong makipaglaro sa kanya at sa kanila [themale friends of the boy] kasi mga maniakis sila. [I don’t like toplay with him and with his friends because they are ‘maniacs’]
Boy [the one who was referred to]: Talaga? Di naman e!
[Really? That’s not true!]
What we can learn from this incident is that in group play friendshipis emphasized, and it becomes a site for ‘fishing’ who has an attraction towhom.
Identified “couples” become so mindful of their peer’s perceptions thatthey avoid playing together. In my observations, even if the “couples” play
together, they stay physically apart from each other.
Childlore therefore becomes an anticipatory socialization for proper gender relations with the opposite sex. It is a “proximal zone,” to use
Vygotsky’s term, where children can learn proper adult roles with regard
to having relationships with the opposite sex. (Insofar as my research deals
with heterosexual relationships, my conclusion may only apply to such kindof relationships.)
Many of the boys I interviewed, however, said they prefer a mixed playgroup or that they do not prefer any sex. Meanwhile, it appears that girls
prefer to play in a same-sex play group more than with boys. In general,
however, there is not yet a fully developed preference for gender in playmates among the children I observed.
Conclusion
Plays and games must be analyzed primarily in their own terms, rather thanbe subordinated to higher goals of the adult world. There is much to belearned from analyzing the childlore of free plays and game plays in the con-

Performing Childlore and Gender Roles in a Public School in Metro Manila

257

text of an educational setting. Childlore reveals the world of children andhow it is different from the adult world. Playlore also reveals how the children are already inducted to the gendered adult world, although the rules
and roles associated with sexual identities are still very much fluid.15
But the learning process is not just a simple transmission.16 As shown inthis study, playlore enables the children to unplug themselves from the quotidian flow of time and activities. By performing the plays involving chants
and rhymes children are able to suspend the established gender scripts of
the adult world.
They do so with much awareness of the contradictions involved, yet because of the nature of the play, they are able to make the “serious” something“frivolous” and “light”. Play offers the young, the small and the powerless, anauthority and freedom unthinkable in non-play life. It is an arena of choicein many contexts where life options are limited. This means that in performing childlore, children can transform rigid adult gender scripts into trivial
matters.
The children’s meanings are interpreted in a humorous manner. The
rhetoric of “just playing” allows them to distance themselves from the realand consequential implications of the sex-related roles the adult world expects from them. This frivolity should be understood as an expression of
Frasca’s notion of ludus. When schoolchildren engage in playlore, they tend
to subordinate instrumental goals outside the play itself to the pleasure they
derive from the performance.
So the tension between freedom and constraint must be maintained.
This is very true especially because society cannot attain complete harmony.
It is split not only by gender biases and antagonism, but also by antagonism
due to age and generation. In an age when everything is reduced to its instrumental value, schoolchildren’s playlore can teach us the value of living in
the “eternalnow.” The right direction, therefore, is to transform the perception of play into the original Vygotskian direction: a revolutionary activity
that can suspend the prevailing norms of the dominant groups of society,in this case the andocentric character of adult gender scripts. However, thistransformation, like a true revolutionary activity, must be conscious and deliberate in its attempt to unmask the unacknowledged “symbolic violence”
arising from the arbitrary imposition of these norms to the second-sex.

258

H u m a n R i g h t s E d u c at i o n i n A s i a - Pa c i f i c

References
Antunes, S. 2006. Leaping into cross-gender role-play. Retrieved 21 August 2010
from the Richard A. Bartle Web site: www.mud.co.uk/richard/ifan195.htm.
Bachillega, C. 1999. Postmodern fairytales. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State
University.
Barnett, L.A., & Kruidenier, P. 1981. “Effects of encapsulation on preschool children’s
imaginative play.” Journal of Leisure Research, 13 (4), 323-336.
Benford, R.D., & Snow, D.A. 2000. “Framing processes and social movements: An
overview and assessment.” Annual Review of Sociology, 26, 11-39.
Beresin, A. R. 1997. “Games, folk.” In T. A. Green, editor, Folklore: An encyclopedia of beliefs, customs, tales, music, and art: Vol. 1. California: abc-clio, pages
339-402.
Berkovits, R. 1970. “Secret languages of schoolchildren.” New York Folklore Quarterly,
26 (2), 127-152.
Bishop, J., & Curtis, M. 2001. “Introduction.” In J. Bishop and M. Curtis, editors, Play
today in primary school ground. Buckingham: Open University, pages 1-13.
Bourdieu, P. 1990. The logic of practice. (R. Nice, Trans.). Stanford: Stanford
University Press.
Bruner, J. 1960. The process of education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Caldera, Y. M., Huston, A. C., O’Brien, M. 1989. “Social Interactions and Play
Patterns of Parents and Toddlers with Feminine, Masculine, and Neutral Toys.”Child Development, 60 (1), 70-76.
Campbell, S.D., & Frost, J.L. 1985. “The effects of playground type on the cognitiveand social play behaviors of grade two children.” In J.L. Frost & S. Sunderlin,
editors, When children play: Proceedings of the International Conference on Playand Play Environments. Wheaton, MD: Association for Childhood Education
International, pages 81-88.
Collins, C A. Editor. 1990. “Folklore fieldwork: Sex, sexuality, and gender.” Southern
Folklore 47 (1).
Culler, J.D. 1982. On deconstruction: Theory and criticism after structuralism. Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press.
Dalisay, G. A. 1983. The Filipino child in contemporary society: Proceedings of theFirst National Seminar on Child Psychology. Quezon City: Asian Institute ofTourism.
Farrer, C.R. Editor. 1975. Women and folklore: Images and genres. Prospect Heights,
Ill: Waveland Press.
Fein, G. 1981. “Pretend play in childhood: An integrative review.” Child Development
52(4), 1095–1118.
Fine, G.A. 1999. “Methodological problems of collecting folklore from children.” In B.
Sutton-Smith, J. Mechling, T. W. Johnson, & F. R. McMahon, editors, Children’s
folklore: A source book. New York: Garland, pages 121-139.
Frasca, G. 1999. Ludology meets narratology: Similitude and differences between (video)games and narrative. [Finnish version originally published in Parnasso#3,
Helsinki.] Retrieved 21 August 2010 from www.ludology.org/articles/ludology.
htm.

Performing Childlore and Gender Roles in a Public School in Metro Manila

259

Frasca, G. 2003. “Simulation versus narrative: An introduction to ludology.” In M. J.
P. Wolf & B. Henry, editors, The video game theory reader. New York: Routledge,
pages 222-235.
Frost, J.L. 1992. “Reflections on research and practice in outdoor play environments.”
Dimensions of Early Childhood 20(4), 6-10.
Frost, J.L., & Klein, B.L. 1979. Children’s play and playgrounds. Boston: Allyn &Bacon.
Galda, L. 1985. Play, language, and stories: The development of children’s literate behavior. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Gergen, K., Gloger-Tippelt G., & Glickman, P. 1990. “Everyday conceptions of thedeveloping child.” In G. Semin & K. Gergen, editors, Everyday understanding:Social & scientific implications. London: Sage.
Goffman, I. 1974. Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. London:
Harper and Row.
Goldenberg, N. R. 1990. Returning words to flesh: feminism, psychoanalysis, and theresurrection of the body. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Gomme, A. B. [1894–1898]/1964. The traditional games of England, Scotland, andIreland (vols. 1-2). New York: Dover.
Green, T. A. Editor. 1997. Folklore: An encyclopedia of beliefs, customs, tales, music,
and art (Vols. 1-2). Santa Barbara, CA: abc-clio.
Grider, S. 1997. “Children’s lore.” In T. A. Green, Editor, Folklore: An encyclopedia ofbeliefs, customs, tales, music, and art 1. California: abc-clio, pages 123-129.
Gulliford, A. 1992. “Fox and geese in the school yard: Play and America’s country
schools, 1840-1940.” In K. Grover, editor, Hard at play: Leisure in America,
1840-1940. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, pages 188-209.
Guthrie, G. M. 1961. The Filipino child and Philippine society: Research reports andessays. Manila: Philippine Normal College Press.
Hollis, S.T., Pershing, L., & Young, M.J., editors. 1993. Feminist theory and the studyof folklore. Illinois: University of Illinois.
Hughes, L. 1999. “Children’s games and gaming.” In B. Sutton-Smith, J. Mechling,
T.W. Johnson, & McMahon, F.R., editors, Children’s lore in school and playgrounds. New York: Garland, pages 93-120.
Huizinga, J. 1950. Homo Ludens: A study of the play element in culture. London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Jacklin, C. N., Maccoby, E. E., & Dick, A. E. 1973. “Barrier behavior and toy preference:
Sex differences (and their absence) in the year-old child.” Child Development
44(1), 196-200.
John-Steiner, V. 1999. “Sociocultural and feminist theory: Mutuality and relevance.”
In S. Chaiklin, M. Hedegaard, & U.J. Jensen, editors, Activity Theory and Social
Practice Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, pages 201-224.
Jordan, R.A., & Kalcik, S.J. Editors. 1985. Women’s folklore, women’s culture.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Journal of American Folklore 1987. 100 (398). [Special issue on Folklore and women].
Klein, B. 1997. “Folklore.” In T. A. Green, editor, Folklore: An encyclopedia of beliefs,
customs, tales, music, and art. Santa Barbara, CA: abc-clio.

260

H u m a n R i g h t s E d u c at i o n i n A s i a - Pa c i f i c

Knapp, M., & Knapp, H. 1976. One Potato, two potato: The secret education ofAmerican children. New York: W. W. Norton.
Lee, B. 1985. “Origins of Vygotsky’s semiotic analysis.” In J. Wertsch, editor, Culture,communication, and cognition: Vygotskian perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, pages 66-93.
Locsin, C.G.C. 2001. Betting on jueteng: An empirical study on the gambling behaviorof people who engage in jueteng. Unpublished master’s thesis. University of thePhilippines, School of Economics.
McDowell., J. H. 1999. “The transmission of children’s folklore.” In B. Sutton-Smith, J.
Mechling, T.W. Johnson, & McMahon, F.R., editors, Children’s folklore: A source
book. New York: Garland, pages 49-63.
Mead, G. H. 1967. Mind, self, and society from the standpoint of a social behaviorist.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Mechling, J. 1999. “Children’s folklore in residential institutions: Summer camps,
boarding schools, hospitals, and custodial facilities. Children’s lore in schooland playgrounds.” In B. Sutton-Smith, J. Mechling, T. W. Johnson, & McMahon,
F.R., editors, Children’s folklore: A source book. New York: Garland, pages
273-293.
Mergen, Bernard. 1999. “Children’s lore in school and playgrounds.” In Brian SuttonSmith, Jay Mechling, Thomas W. Johnson, and Felicia R. McMahon F.R., editors, Children’s folklore: A source book. New York: Garland, pages 229-250.
Mills, M. 1993. “Feminist theory and the study of folklore: A twenty-year trajectory.”
Western Folklore, 52(2/4), 173-192.
Mitchell, J. 1982. Feminine sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the Ecole Freudienne. New
York: Pantheon.
Nery, J. Editor. 2002. Unholy nation: Stories from a gambling republic. With an introduction by John Nery. Quezon City: Claretian Publications.
Newman, F., & Holzman, L. 1993. Lev Vygotsky: Revolutionary scientist. London:
Routledge.
Opie, I., & Iona, P. 1959. The lore and language of schoolchildren. Oxford: Clarendon.
Pellegrini, A.D., Galda, L., Dresden, J., & Cox, S. 1991. “A longitudinal study of thepredictive relations among symbolic play, linguistic verbs, and early literacy.”
Research in the Teaching of English, 25(2), 219-235.
Piaget, J. 1962. Play, dreams and imitation in childhood. New York: Norton. Sawin, P.
E. 2002. “Performance at the nexus of gender, power, and desire: Reconsidering
Bauman’s verbal art from the perspective of gendered subjectivity as performance.” Journal of American Folklore, 115(455), 28-61.
Schiebinger, L. L. 2000. Feminism and the body. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sutton-Smith, B. 1970. “Psychology of childlore: The triviality barrier.” Western
Folklore 29(1), 1–8.
Sutton-Smith, B. 1968. “The Folk Games of Children.” In T. P. Coffin editor, Our living
traditions: An introduction to American folklore. New York: Basic Books, pages
179-191.
Sutton-Smith, B., Mechling, J., Johnson, T.W., & McMahon, F.R. Editors. 1999.
Children’s folklore: A source book. New York: Garland.
Turner, V. 1988. The anthropology of performance. New York: PAJ Publications.

Performing Childlore and Gender Roles in a Public School in Metro Manila

261

Vygotsky, L. S. 1992. Educational psychology. (R. Silverman, Trans.). Florida: St.
Lucie Press.
Weedon, C. 1987. Introduction to social constructionism. London: Routledge.
Wertsch, J. V. 1991. Voices of the mind: A sociocultural approach to mediated action.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wood, E., & Attfield, J. 2005. Play, learning and the early childhood curriculum.
California: Paul Chapman.
Young, M. J. 1997. “Feminist perspectives on folklore scholarship.” In T. A. Green,
editor, Folklore: An encyclopedia of beliefs, customs, tales, music, and art. Santa
Barbara, CA: abc-clio.
Zizek, Slavoj. 1992. Enjoy your symptom! Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and out. New
York: Routledge.

Endnotes
According to Owe Ronström (1997), the earliest studies of children’s folklore
were undertaken by Lady Bertha Gomme and the American William Wells Newell, afounder of the American Folklore Society and first editor of the Journal of American
Folklore.
2
Recent feminist folklorists have attempted to question the complacent silenceof folklorists on the issues of gender (Bachillega, 1997; Collin, 1990; Mills, 1993;
Young, 1997). A “triviality barrier” tended to see childlore as non-serious (SuttonSmith, 1981). Today, the study of folklore common among children has become partof folkloristics or formal study of folklore (see for instance, Opie and Iona, 1959;
Knapp and Knapp, 1976; McDowell, 1983; Sutton-Smith, Mechling, Johnson and
McMahon, 1999; Bishop and Curtis, 2001). As Sylvia Grider (2007, page 128) points
out, “Folklorists are unusual among humanists and social scientists for their acceptance of children and their traditions on the children’s own terms, as a folk groupworthy of study in its own right rather than an adjunct of an older or more sophisticated body of informants.
3
For anthropologists and folklorists, going to distant communities is the norm
for collecting and studying folklore. Another barrier is how many anthropologists
collect childlore by asking adults to remember what they did and played when
they were children (Fine, 1999; Sutton-Smith, 1999). The more appropriate methodof course is to study children themselves during performance of plays and games(Hughes, 1999).
4
Early pedagogical research on gender and play, like the early folklore studies,concentrated mainly on essentialistic definition of gender differences and looked into
the differences among boys and girls in choosing toys (Fein, 1981; Jacklin, Maccoby,and Dick, 1973), the influence of mothers and fathers in choosing play (Caldera et al.,1989), and the amount of emotion and affect involve in the play (Campbell & Frost,1985). Usually these studies, heavily inspired by experimental method, pursued theissue in terms of biology and culture, and nurture and culture (see Frost, 1992). Most
psychological studies, regardless of their paradigms, emphasized the role of biology
in early gender differences with regard to play. Conclusions drawn from such stud1

262

H u m a n R i g h t s E d u c at i o n i n A s i a - Pa c i f i c

ies are often used as either correctives to or launch pads for existing pedagogicalprograms in schools. Women folklorists have questioned the androcentric biases inmale-stream folkloristics (Journal of American Folklore, 1987), and this has led to theproliferation of feminist approaches to the study of folklore (for representative studies, see Bachillega, 1999; Farrer, 1986; Jordan & Kalcik, 1985).
5
The pioneering works of Mills (1993) Jordan and Kalcik (1985), Farrer (1986),
and Hollis and Pershing (1993) addressed gender issues in the study of folklore. Early
folklore studies (dominated by male researchers) avoided the issues of gender andsexual identity. The equation of men with culture has undermined the specificity ofwomen’s experience (see Young, 1997, vol. 1, 287). With the publication of Womenand Folklore in 1975, women’s issues in folklore became an academic focus.
6
Just as in performances where there is separation between audience and theperformers, the sacred and the profane (Turner, 1988, page 25), so in play there is alsoa drawing of boundaries.
7
Frames are basic cognitive structures that guide the perception and representation of reality. On the whole, frames are not consciously manufactured but areunconsciously adopted in the course of communicative processes (Benford & Snow,
2000).
8This is very similar to Gergen et al.’s (1990) analysis of child development.
9
For Billig and others “contrary themes of social knowledge are revealed in everyday discourse” (1988, page 21), and are “fundamentally born out of a culture which
produces more than one possible ideal world, more than one hierarchical arrangement of power, value and interest” (page 163).
10
A feminist who is sympathetic to the sociocultural approach to the mind
suggests that “feminist and cultural-historical theory have some crucial contributions for each other.” (John-Steiner, 1999, page 202). Both traditions acknowledge
relationality in defining identity and the cultural foundation of mental processes.
However, while Vygotsky’s sociocultural approach to ontogenesis is very similar tothe standpoint of feminism that looks at the specificity of various fields of knowledge, Vygotsky and Mead did not address the question of gender in their respective
sociocultural analyses of the mind. Both Vygotsky and Mead failed to theorize thespecificity of gender as a cultural variable in their respective explanations.
11
A Sony-Ericsson K750i phone camera.
12
Victor Turner (1988, page 25) defines liminality as a phase in ritual performance separating specified members of a group from everyday life, placing them ina limbo that is not any place before and not any place they would be in after.
13
Play may be likened to Victor Turner’s concept of flow —“an interior state
which can be described as the merging of action and awareness, the holistic sensation present when we act with total involvement, a state in which action follows action according to an internal logic, with no apparent need for conscious intervention
on our part” (1988, page 54).
Flow is present in play because there is “a centering of attention on a limited
stimulus field, by means of framing, bracketing, and usually a set of rules.” (Turner,
1988, page 54). Moreover, in play as in flow, “there is a loss of ego, the self that normally acts as broker between ego and alter becomes irrelevant” (Turner, 1988, page55).

Performing Childlore and Gender Roles in a Public School in Metro Manila

263

As two followers of Vygotsky remark, “play is much more a performance thanacting...they are acting out their societally predetermined roles. We are all cast by society into very sharply determined roles; what one does in a role is act it. Performancediffers from acting in that it is the socialized activity of people self-consciously creating new roles out of what exists for a social performance” (Newman & Holman, 1993,
pages 102-103).
14
The Lacanian formula of sexuation that separates the feminine from the masculine should not be seen as essentialistic dimorphism. For Lacan, sexual differenceis the Real. It is a void, a gap that the feminine and masculine subject position cannot
close (Mitchell, 1986; Zizek, 1992).
15
In plays, as Vygotsky points out, the child “emancipates her/himself from situational constraints, such as the immediate perceptualized field.” Yet “being freed fromthe situational constraints, the child, paradoxically, also faces constraints imposedby play: the rules of imagination” (Newman & Holman, 1993, page 99). Moreover,Vygotsky argues, Play gives a child a new form of desires [rules]. It teaches her todesire by relating her desire to a fictitious “I,” to her role in the game and its rules. In
this way a child’s greatest achievements are possible in play, achievements that tomorrow will become her basic action and morality” (quoted in Newman & Holzman,
1993, page 99).
16
While Vygotsky emphasizes learning future roles, one must also balance itwith Turner’s creative interpretation of play and performance:
Cultural performances are not simple reflectors or expressionsof culture or even of changing culture but may themselves be active
agencies of change, representing the eye by which culture sees itself
and the drawing board on which creative actors sketch out what they
believe to be more apt or interesting design for living” (Turner, 1988,
page 24).