Computer games are good for children
Posted: 03/19/2008 Filed under: Softworlds Leave a comment »(Written in 2000; nothing’s changed)
Son: They’re not letting us play Warcraft at school anymore.
Father: The other shoe dropped?
Son: Huh?
Father: You told me they were looking for a reason to stop the gaming.
Son: Yeah, I don’t think they ever wanted us playing games. Teachers were always complaining.
Father: Complaining about what?
Son: Noise, language, not letting the little kids play, that only boys play Warcraft. Mostly, they complain that Warcraft’s not educational and shouldn’t be played in school.
Father: What do you think? What do you do in Warcraft?
Son: Try to kill the other team.
Father: That’s it? What’s fun about it?
Son: It’s fun to work with your partner. There’re four computers networked for games. We usually play two against two.
Father: You like the teamwork. What do you like about it?
Son: Yeah I like working with someone to beat the other team. We explore the area, try to figure out what the other team is going to do, and make plans.
Father: Hmm…collaboration, research, strategy — sounds like the foundation of business, science, athletics or any professional endeavor. I wonder what those who don’t want you playing games mean by educational?
Son: They seem to like math games, programs that read a story, and Carmen Sandiego.
Father: Yes, the old favorites. Software that emphasizes tricks and procedures, memorization, and looking things up.
Son: What does that mean?
Father: Tricks and procedures is what you do in arithmetic — addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division; or, as Lewis Carrol put it: “ambition, distraction, uglification, and derision.” Arithmetic is learning the tricks and procedures of calculation. This is in contrast to mathematics which is the study of formal relations. Arithmetic is tricks and procedures; mathematics is about ideas.
Son: You think that learning arithmetic isn’t important?
Father: It’s nice to know your times tables and to be able to do arithmetic but it doesn’t deserve the devotion it gets. Tricks and procedures are either understood or not. If the tricks and procedures of arithmetic are understood, then you’re going to get almost every calculation correct. If they’re not understood, then you’ll usually get the calculation wrong. If you’ve learned calculation, you don’t need to practice much. If you haven’t learned calculation, you’ll need further instruction — practice won’t help. Most arithmetic software is not designed to help you learn calculation. I’d be far more impressed if I saw some useful math software, for example, about statistics in everyday life. How about a program that taught gambling odds? We’ll call it, You Betcha, the game that sheds light on your winning chances in games — from Blackjack to state lotteries. You’d learn that you have the same chance at winning the lottery as you do of falling off a cliff and landing in a pile of hundred-dollar bills.
Son: Are you okay, Dad? You got a little excited.
Father: Guess I did. I just don’t see why calculation games, interactive books, and Carmen Sandiego have become sacred in so many schools. Calculation is a useful but trivial skill, the acquisition which is not much helped by a computer. Interactive books are a poor and relatively expensive, substitute for real books read by Mom and Dad. Carmen is basically the game of Clue with history facts. Simple statistics, on the other hand, can be quite useful to learn. And, by the way, a good way to begin learning statistics is by playing computer games — especially role playing, strategy, and war games.
