Push-pin was an English child's game played from the 16th until the 19th centuries. It is also known as "put-pin", and it is similar to Scottish games called "Hattie" and "Pop the Bonnet".^[1] In philosophy it has been used as an example of a relatively worthless form of amusement.

In push-pin each player sets one pin (needle) on a table and then tries to push his pin across his opponent's pin.^[2] The game is played by two or more players.

In "Pop the Bonnet", or "hattie", players place two pins on the brim of a hat. They take turns tapping or "popping" on the sides of the hat trying to cause pins to cross one another. Whichever player causes them to cross takes the pins.^{[3] [4]} This was a form of gambling, where a player could win or lose their pins, which were valuable as a rare imported commodity at that time.

Boys and men might stash several pins on a sleeve or lapel to be prepared to play.^[5]

Push-pin was immortalized by Jeremy Bentham when he wrote in The Rationale of Reward that: "Prejudice apart, the game of push-pin is of equal value with the arts and sciences of music and poetry."^[6] John Stuart Mill, who disagreed with Bentham on this point, misquotes Bentham as saying, "quantity of pleasure being equal, push-pin is as good as poetry".^[7] Mill's version is now widely attributed to Bentham. The phrase comes up often in the work of R. S. Peters, a British philosopher of education, who uses some version of the phrase "why poetry is preferable to push-pin" as a way of drawing attention to the question of what is educationally worthwhile. For Peters, only intrinsically worthwhile activities warrant inclusion into the school curriculum. If a case could be made for the intrinsic educational value of push-pin (or a similar pastime), it could warrant inclusion. See for example "The Philosopher's Contribution to Educational Research," Educational Philosophy and Theory 1(2), October 1969, page 3.