I gave this talk at The Playful Learning Centre in Helsinki, Finland. I argued that although play has  always had a role in many theories of education and child-rearing,  we now seem to live in an era where playfulness, especially in the form of games, penetrate many  aspects of domestic, civil and  social life. Perhaps because of this, play in schools is now a highly serious and formal demand which has found its way into the range of digital toys now being bought by  parents for their children. I tried to mock why we take play so seriously in education and argued that  educators need to find a way to constantly stay close to the edge in a world becoming more hidebound, controlled and constrained.