A Modest Proposal
Not too cool for school
Reaffirming my faith in the intelligence quotient of game industry professionals, nearly all readers of last month's column saw through the catch-all insults and got the point. Mental deficiency as an innocent attribute doesn't bother me ? if a person's just naturally dim, fine. It happens sometimes, as the result of absent opportunity or closed head injury, and I'd not look down on someone for it. No, my problem (and from the volume of email, yours too) is with people who relish their ignoramus- uh, ness; individuals who evince a fierce pride in stupidity, who strive to be average even as they reduce the expectation of what average is. Many of them dislike advocates of sapience or mental improvement, claiming that those individuals act ?superior.?
New flash, imbeciles of the world: intelligent people are superior. Get over it.
Lat month I also mentioned the need to change schooling to transmit more information faster. Rather than moaning about shortened attention spans, recognize it as a step in cognitive evolution. Modern people can ingest and understand vast servings of information very quickly. This capability is developing in tandem with the quantum increase of information in the world. Schools must capitalize on that. It's time to take education out a whole new door.
Researchers like Jim Gee and Clark Aldrich have established games as teaching tools. Let's carry their work to the next level. Don't bring games into the classroom. Make them the classroom, balls to bones.
Experts say that games can't completely replace other forms of pedagogy. Maybe not, if you simply take games and try to stuff them up the current model for education, a model based mostly on rote memorization through lecture, and less on interpretation and application. You're told that Animal Farm is a commentary on Socialism, told where Bhutan is. Games don't work that way; they are experiential. Players draw their own conclusions from the context, which is why games couldn't totally replace the system as it exists today. Redesign the model to focus on experiential learning, though, and games would be a perfect fit. Of course, the games would have to be very well-designed.
As we well know, games teach all kinds of stuff ? like how to effectively defend (or conduct) a tower rush, how to slip unnoticed into Agroprom, or what became of the Ayleids. But most of that is of little practical value. The challenge is creating knowledge transfer mechanisms that are fun and real-world applicable. ?Edutainment? has a shaky history. In the past it just wasn't that much fun, though that's really changed in the era of Humongous and similar studios. Keep on that path and games will be able to teach pretty much anything.
An experiential model for pedagogy depends on students playing the same games but interpreting and comprehending their contents individually. The facts ? the constants that never change, like 4 + 4 = 8, or ?don't eat toadstools' ? will be learned by all, just as everyone who played Morrowind can find Balmora or identify a Guar, because those concepts are integral and unchanging. In game environments, you can learn by doing without fear of disaster? eat all the toadstools you want, then reload the course and file your new knowledge under ?what not to eat.?
Interpretation, though, is individual: how each player responds to Morrowind's Nerevarine Prophecy storyline will differ, because the experience differs. Memorization is the equivalent of learning only what the winner wrote; experiential learning encourages exploration and independent interpretation, while still including the nuts and bolts facts that don't change.
One of the challenges for a games-based classroom is transitioning learners from their onscreen experiences to real world applications. A game that teaches algebra should keep that fact well-hidden. Kids immediately get suspicious when threatened with something that seems too much like a learning tool. Instead, conceal the algebra training inside an economic or management sim along the lines of Zoo Tycoon (which conveniently would also teach about animals, basic geometry, problem solving, etc.), and ramp it up gently. But at some point you have to help the learner make the mental connection, the ?oh wow? moment? to realize, essentially, that skills learned in interactive zoo management work in life as well.
Games considered simplistic by today's standards can still be models for the kind of thing we'd need in a fully games-based school system. Seven Cities of Gold teaches geography, money management and colonial history, while starkly presenting how conquistadors behaved toward Native Americans. Balance of Power , with just a few tiny tweaks, could teach students about sociopolitics, national cultures, how individual nations tend to exert influence, and government procedure. That's something pretty valuable when you stop to consider that most kids graduating from American high schools don't know the difference between the Senate and the House of Representatives.
An experiential education could also teach good social behavior. That may seem surprising given the attacks on this industry, but it's true. I'm not the first to recognize that Bully could be a very effective anti-bullying trainer and a nice model to simulate playground politics and group dynamics. ?How to deal with other people? isn't offered as a class in most elementary schools. Maybe it should be.
And games make it really fast. You don't have to play much Seven Cities of Gold before you get the picture. In the states, K-12 education is in trouble because bureaucrats, not educators, run the system. Plus there's now so much to teach that it just can't get crammed into the thirteen years of schooling American kids get. So teachers simply help their students memorize what they know will appear on the standardized tests. The result: a generation that can take the crap out of a test but has no idea what anything means. People learn when they think about things, and that's really what games make you do. Forget the current system of education; it's outdated and ineffective. The experts are already on board with the idea that games are literally the future. If games are the future, and children are the future, maybe together they can help us reach the future.
) and I think that in the process of finally elevating them to a form of art I will always be on the side of games.
