Why Boredom Matters

Education, Leisure, and the Quest for a Meaningful Life

Kevin Hood Gary

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781108839983
• eBook ISBN: 9781108880411
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Educational Psychology

Boredom is an enduring problem. In response, schools often do one or both of the following: first, they endorse what novelist Walker Percy describes as a 'boredom avoidance scheme, ' adopting new initiative after new initiative in the hope that boredom can be outrun altogether, or second, they compel students to accept boring situations as an inevitable part of life. Both strategies avoid serious reflection on this universal and troubling state of mind. In this book, Gary argues that schools should educate students on how to engage with boredom productively. Rather than being conditioned to avoid or blame boredom on something or someone else, students need to be given tools for dealing with their boredom. These tools provide them with internal resources that equip them to find worthwhile activities and practices to transform boredom into a more productive state of mind. This book addresses the ways students might gain these skills.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 The Morality of Boredom and a Brief History of Leisure
• 2 The Problem of Boredom
• 3 Despair: The Source of Boredom
• 4 Leisure: A Cure for Boredom
• 5 The Art of Leisure
• 6 Cultivating Leisure
• Epilogue: Coda on the Self at Leisure
• References
• Index