How Much Gaming in Schools and The Element
By Paul McMahon on Feb 22, 2009 in Appropriate Hardware for Education, Education in Hong Kong, Learning for a Flat World and tagged books, element, gaming, Robinson
Doug Johnson of The Blue Skunk Blog fame just posted about Sir Ken Robinson’s book which he has been reading. I am very keen to try to get hold of a copy myself. Here is the link to the post and copied below is my reply.
I enjoyed this post Doug, as I have enjoyed many others from you. The issue that I have with the theory of “finding and then supporting the intelligence” is that it presupposes that kids live in environments where they have exposure to all of life’s rich experiences from which they can see what they are good at. Here in Hong Kong, limitations of space and parental income mean that kids get to find out if they are good at shopping, helping parents in the family printing business or studying hard. These kids may excel at barefoot water skiing, golf, horse riding or film making like your son but they may not get to find out if they are never exposed to the experience. I guess that we should be aiming to expose kids to every experience possible in their environment but the local schools in this part of the world have a long way to go to achieve this for all. Depressing!
The other thing that I have trouble getting my head around is the gaming phenomena and just how far we support this as being a valid “interest” of kids. Again, to quote a HK context, every kid here would have to say that they are interested in (good at??) gaming. We have areas of Hong Kong with arcades full of gaming consoles for sale. Kids and adults alike travel the subways of Hong Kong with attention glued to the Nintendo DS or PSP. I have yet to see any of them having math formulas or foreign phrases for learning a modern foreign language on the screen and most, if not all, would see them as recreational rather than educational. As a consequence, the international schools here have very strict policies about games on computers brought to school see this post from an international school librarian.
It would be very brave of a school to say “I think a lot of our kids seem to be very interested in gaming so we are going to let them develop this intelligence and hope it leads to a rewarding future.” Even Will Richardson expects adults to direct kids into broader learning at schools. Given this, where is the guidance for a librarian like Diane in terms of how far to support the “gaming issue” in schools?
1 Comment(s)
Hi Paul,
Thanks much for you considered reply. I always appreciate the time readers take to respond to something I have written.
You can find my personal take on games in school here in a column for Education World: http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/columnists/johnson/johnson021.shtml The nickel version is:
“Let’s be clear that there are games and there are games — just like there are movies and there are movies; there are books and there are books. Games vary widely in type — from first person shoot em’ ups to skill attainment tutors with complex management programs. Games vary in taste, rating, maturity level, and even factual accuracy. The question shouldn’t be “Do we permit students to play games?” but “Which games should we allow our students to play?””
In regard to my own son, my readings tell me that his gaming interest could develop into a legitimate career path. Video gaming in the US is a bigger business than film making and seems recession-proof. A good video game requires art, music, writing, computing and a host of other skills to develop.
And I could not agree more that children should be exposed to a wide variety of subjects and experiences. I readily admit that I write from a Western middle-class perspective where, I suppose, this a given. I appreciate being call to task on that. Oh, and I do think our schools are narrowing exposure to other kinds of experiences as testing-mania increases here as well. Isn’t this why libraries and good technology access is important to kids everywhere? What better ways to find new things and interests?
Again, I appreciate the conversation and all the best. It’s been 20 years since I was last in Hong Kong. It’s always been one of my favorite cities.
All the best,
Doug