Classrooms as Cultural Playgrounds
ROWENA AZADA-PALACIOS (Ateneo de Manila University)

Both at home and abroad, recent headlines have cast a spotlight on the politics of national identity, posing a challenge to educators who may feel ill-equipped to talk about such topics in the classroom. In this paper, I draw on postcolonial and decolonial analyses to arrive at a more nuanced way of understanding national identity than is found in the standard educational literature. Then, I propose an alternative framework for teaching national identity, which approaches the exploration of identity as play. I unpack the concept of play by contrasting Barbara Cassin’s and Vicente Rafael’s reflections on language, and by contrasting a playful exploration of exploring identity with Amartya Sen’s non-playful understanding of cultural identities. I end with examples of a playful approach to exploring national and cultural identities in the classroom.