The carnival goes on and on! Children’s perceptions of their leisure time and play in SFO¹

1. The Norwegian term SFO – literally the school spare‐time programme – may be rendered as the school day‐care service or after‐school programme, a service taking care of school children before and after school.

Abstract

Through a broad empirical study, I have attempted to show children’s perceptions of their leisure time and play within the institutional framework of SFO (Norwegian acronym for ‘skolefritidsordning’ – the school day‐care centre). ² Not surprisingly, children appear to have different and ambiguous understandings of their time off from school. They connect leisure time to play and social dialogue with friends. However, it is often the escape from the established world itself, the official institutionalised life, that is considered to be fun and amusing and perceived to a large degree as leisure. Based on the ideas of such thinkers as Mikhail Bakhtin, I will discuss in more detail the relation between children’s official life in school and the unofficial life after school in SFO.

Keywords:

• laughter
• feast
• institutionalisation
• escape
• dialogue

Notes

1. The Norwegian term SFO – literally the school spare‐time programme – may be rendered as the school day‐care service or after‐school programme, a service taking care of school children before and after school.

2. SFO is a voluntary programme for children in the first to fourth grades in the Norwegian school before and after school hours. No extension of the school’s function and tradition was originally envisaged because this might provide children attending SFO with advantages in relation to academic achievement in school. SFO was consequently designed to be something else. The act and provisions relating to SFO state ‘SFO shall facilitate for play, culture and spare‐time activities based on the age, functional level and interests of the children. SFO shall provide children with care and supervision’ (Sections 42 and 30 of the Act relating to Primary School) (KUF, 1999).

3. Rabelais and His World (first published in 1968) is basically an analysis of Rabelais’ novels. Bakhtin did not link the idea of carnival directly to school, but through his own practice opens for the idea that his concepts may be interpreted into new connections and contexts.

4. The Norwegian term ‘skolefritidsordning’ (school leisure programme), containing the idea of leisure and programme, exemplifies the ambiguity the children point to. A similar ambiguity is found in the official guidelines for SFO.