Games evolve faster than school does.
A lot of guys I knew growing up, myself included, preferred playing video games to going to school. We tend to see this as a failure on the part of the student- unable to focus on what’s important (school), focusing instead on trivial entertainment.
I’d like to reframe that. I’d put the blame on schools. Video games have evolved. They’ve been through tonnes of trial and error. Video games are so addictive and engaging because they have to be, in order to survive. There’s no government subsidy to keep them afloat. If your game sucks, it sucks, and nobody’s going to play it. There are no “mandatory video games” the way there is mandatory education. You pick up a game and you play it because it’s engaging, fun and compelling.
The ‘Bad Medicine’ Doctrine: School’s supposed to suck.
That’s what school should be. The problem is that school isn’t allowed to adapt and evolve to keep students’ attention. If our public education system sucks, well, too bad. Suck it up and deal with it. We have people who are supposed to tweak and improve it, but it’s a hellishly difficult task when they’re not allowed to trial and error properly.
The only real way I think we could make dramatic leaps forward in our education system would be to try completely different things, then compare and contrast the results. This sort of experimentation is somehow politically frowned upon. We’re supposed to pretend that we know what works. It’s obviously not working. Ask the teachers.
We assume that students are responsible for their learning, or that teachers are. (This isn’t entirely untrue.)
It’s selfish, myopic and unfair to blame kids if they don’t automatically work well in a factory-called-school.
School could afford to be a lot more engaging. If kids are falling asleep in school, it’s because I think they don’t have any intriguing enough challenges to work on, they aren’t faced with interesting enough possibilities, they don’t see any point in doing what they do.
The few that do succeed and work hard manage to construct a narrative in which school is either fun, or a necessary evil. That’s noteworthy, remarkable, something to learn from.
What I’d like to see though, is school actually becoming fun and engaging.
Before public education, we had apprenticeships. And that was quite engaging, really. Learning how to make something, or do something. You see yourself getting better at something real and relevant, and it’s something you can be proud of, and get credit for.
Video games have evolved more in 30 years than public education has in 300. the original video games were played by a niche group of nerds- video games today are a bigger industry than Hollywood.
Schools should learn from video games.
Games evolve faster than school does.
A lot of guys I knew growing up, myself included, preferred playing video games to going to school. We tend to see this as a failure on the part of the student- unable to focus on what’s important (school), focusing instead on trivial entertainment.
I’d like to reframe that. I’d put the blame on schools. Video games have evolved. They’ve been through tonnes of trial and error. Video games are so addictive and engaging because they have to be, in order to survive. There’s no government subsidy to keep them afloat. If your game sucks, it sucks, and nobody’s going to play it. There are no “mandatory video games” the way there is mandatory education. You pick up a game and you play it because it’s engaging, fun and compelling.
The ‘Bad Medicine’ Doctrine: School’s supposed to suck.
That’s what school should be. The problem is that school isn’t allowed to adapt and evolve to keep students’ attention. If our public education system sucks, well, too bad. Suck it up and deal with it. We have people who are supposed to tweak and improve it, but it’s a hellishly difficult task when they’re not allowed to trial and error properly.
The only real way I think we could make dramatic leaps forward in our education system would be to try completely different things, then compare and contrast the results. This sort of experimentation is somehow politically frowned upon. We’re supposed to pretend that we know what works. It’s obviously not working. Ask the teachers.
We assume that students are responsible for their learning, or that teachers are. (This isn’t entirely untrue.)
It’s selfish, myopic and unfair to blame kids if they don’t automatically work well in a factory-called-school.
School could afford to be a lot more engaging. If kids are falling asleep in school, it’s because I think they don’t have any intriguing enough challenges to work on, they aren’t faced with interesting enough possibilities, they don’t see any point in doing what they do.
The few that do succeed and work hard manage to construct a narrative in which school is either fun, or a necessary evil. That’s noteworthy, remarkable, something to learn from.
What I’d like to see though, is school actually becoming fun and engaging.
Before public education, we had apprenticeships. And that was quite engaging, really. Learning how to make something, or do something. You see yourself getting better at something real and relevant, and it’s something you can be proud of, and get credit for.
Video games have evolved more in 30 years than public education has in 300. the original video games were played by a niche group of nerds- video games today are a bigger industry than Hollywood.