Video Games - The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

My viewpoint on video games as a model for learning tends to conflict with many people's thoughts.  I grew up on video games and screen time.  As usual, my early experiences were very different from normal humans.  My mom purchased a computer back in the late 70s, before Windows, before they were popular.  My mother also allowed her small daughter to play on her expensive computer.  She also told this small child that she (mom) would not purchase video games, but that she (daughter) was welcome to make some and play them anytime she liked.  She bought me PC World and MS-DOS / Basic books, when most children were still learning their See Spot Run books.

The video game model is not saying that video games are the best learning tools.  But it does pose very interesting insight into human behavior.  You would think that schoolchildren would be happy with easy classes, not too much work, and lots of praise and success.  Video game behaviour shows us the polar opposite.  The child wants the game to get harder.  They want to master the skills needed. The first levels are pretty easy - everyone starts off at the beginning.  But the "reward" for doing well is that the game gets harder.  There might be a few flashy screens and sounds for your level up.  There is no getting around failure.  If you don't do the right things, you die and get to start all over again.  And yet, the kids are perfectly content to re-do level after level and enjoy the fact that their tasks are harder.

How does this mirror learning?  I don't think kids' learning styles have changed all that much.  They want to learn.  In fact, no matter how hard you try, you cannot stop little ones from learning.  It's fine if their learning starts off easy, but if they have the skills, they want to power through and move on.  They do not want to keep doing the same easy things over and over.  Interestingly, how many of us enjoy jobs were you do the same non-challenging thing over and over?  I go slightly (more) insane!!  Students want to stay challenged.  But neither do they want to be thrown into the middle of stuff that they cannot understand.  Sometimes their skill level meets a death of sorts, and they need to go back a level and try again.

In the one-room schoolhouse days students were not ranked by age / grade.  They started with the Primer and were quite welcome to jump to the Sixth Reader if they were capable.  While they may be in the Sixth Reader, they also could still be learning basic addition facts, knowing that when the math is learned, they will jump up, regardless of size, age, or grade level.  At the same time, if they haven't mastered a level, they won't move up.

I watched my middle son fail every grade, every class.  The teachers just kept moving him up and the levels got harder and harder, but he never learned the foundation.  The same happened with my oldest boy.  In sixth grade, he was reading at a third grade level.  Therefore, sixth grade was miserable for him.  For MJ, the middle boy, he needed the foundation and challenge.  By 8th grade, he was happily reading college engineering textbooks.  If he needed foundation, he asked and I gave.  For Lucas, the eldest, he came home to school with me.  I said nothing about reading or failure.  Instead, I dropped him back to the last level of success and asked him to please help me teach his little brother to read (2nd grade).  Pride was restored, because he was the teacher and hero.  At the same time, he started from level two and leveled right on up to high school levels by the end of 6th grade.

I have no problem with games in our home or with screen time.  When the kids were smaller, we did moderate what games were played, although I'd say I was fairly liberal.  I also share concerns with my co-horts about large motor skill development.  I totally missed that development and I over-taxed my young eyes, resulting in a very high glasses prescription.

Keep your students challenged.  Let them move on when they prove ready, but don't categorically shove them up a level because it makes your track record look good.