("The Phrase "All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy" Is True.")


On a final note, it may be unfair to call Jack a complete fuck-up, but then again the man does squander his chance to make his life something new. And perhaps it’s just out of habit, but by the end of the movie the man has become yet another person claiming to be a writer and producing little to nothing. This would make Jack Torrance only slightly more of a monster than those people who write screenplays at Starbucks.




There's a saying in English: "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." It expresses the belief that the best way to raise a child is to give a fully-rounded upbringing. Too much dreary grind and labor, the proverb suggests, and you will have a wet blanket on your hands instead of a person who is the life and soul of the party.

I mention this because this simple motto seems to me to summarize the most serious drawback of the Chinese approach to education: the fact that Chinese schools churn out young adults who have been pushed so hard to swot and pass exams that they have not been allowed to develop a wider range of skills, such as interpersonal communication and teamwork. There has been no time for all that stuff, Chinese students often explain to me. They have been too busy studying.

This aspect of Chinese culture, as is well-known, owes a great deal to the influence of the philosopher Confucius. Confucius emphasized the importance of learning in order to develop oneself as a human being. The problem is that after his death this perfectly acceptable idea became distorted over the centuries, until nothing was left of it but the necessity to force young people to sit hunched over books in classrooms. The goal of such activity is mainly to pass tests so that the children can get good jobs and support their parents in their dotage.

If we return to the English proverb, it is striking that it expresses the opposite of what Chinese parents appear to want for their offspring. It tells us that what we need to do, as parents, is to allow our children to experiment outside the stifling confines of the classroom, so that their personalities can develop in full. Otherwise we risk imprinting only the contents of textbooks on impressionable minds, making them, as the short years of their childhoods pass by, colorless individuals without inspiration or charisma.

As an educator at a Chinese university, observing and listening to my students gives me the impression that the Confucian-influenced education system here has produced a generation of dull Jacks rather than well-rounded personalities set up for the adult world of work. These young people are, on the whole, earnest and sincere, which is very good; but, on the other hand, they are neither inspired nor inspiring. They appear to be caught up in a process not of their own choosing and which they do not understand very well. Whenever they have the chance, they let off steam by skipping rope or playing other games which in my country, the UK, are associated with early childhood. It is as if they are seeking - alas, too late - to make up for years of lost play.

The point I am trying to make is that Chinese youth would be better served by an educational approach which emphasizes the development of the whole person rather than just the bookish scholar. Confucius himself would surely have agreed. It must have been a whole-person - and not a dull Jack - education he had in mind when he said: "Every truth has four corners: as a teacher I give you one corner, and it is for you to find the other three."

This article was published on the Global Times Metropolitan section Two Cents page, a space for reader submissions, including opinion, humor and satire. The ideas expressed are those of the author alone, and do not represent the position of the Global Times.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy is a saying that relates to the work life balance. The work life balance is the optimum balance between our working lives and our social and home lives.

And thus, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

It means that “if a person does too much mental tasks and is not able to find time for play, rest, and recreation, then finally his mind would turn dull and lazy. Slowly, he may start losing interest in his work”.

I suspect the reason domestic violence is so disturbing is because husbands and fathers are supposed to be the emotional protectors against the outside world. Even if men aren’t supposed to be terribly emotional creatures, there’s still an understanding in families that fathers are supposed to love their children and husbands are supposed to love their wives. Watching the film after my mother made her great comment I was watching a later scene as I had never watched it before. Wendy walks into the main lobby, finds Jack missing, and discovers his manuscript which is composed of nothing but the phrase “All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy.” Realizing that her husband has lost his mind, and steadily has been losing his mind, she begins to weep when Jack appears and the following dialogue exchange occurs:

Its meaning: The proverb “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” highlights the importance of activities of recreation, play, rest, leisure, etc. in our lives.

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But all play and no work makes him something worse.

Until the Torrance revival in the London theatre we shall just have to be content with All Work and No Play. I look forward to the in the Financial Times.

But all play and no work@@" data-id="1379178" data-place="8"

The relationship between play and learning seems obvious to many child professionals and parents, and yet there are still lack of understanding surrounding the importance of children's play. Some people believe that children need to "work" not play, and that playing serves no useful purpose in a learning and development environment. This is surprising considering that play, with its high levels of motivation and potential enjoyment empowers children (as well as people of all ages) as follows:…

Remember, "all work and no play, makes Jack a dull boy."

All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy is nothing short of a complete rethinking of what a novel can and should be. It’s true that, taken on its own, All Work is plotless. But like the best of Beckett, the lack of forward momentum is precisely the point. If it’s nearly impossible to read, let us take a moment to consider how difficult it must have been to write. One is forced to consider the author, heroically pitting himself against the Sisyphusean sentence. It’s that metatextual struggle of Man vs. Typewriter that gives this book its spellbinding power. Some will dismiss it as simplistic; that’s like dismissing a Pollack canvas as mere splatters of paint.

It's all work and no play.@@" data-id="630516" data-place="10"

Man is a social being and can never live a mundane routine always. Man undergoes different swings and moods in his daily life. Hence,the saying "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" holds very true.