Pamela Paul on learning and games:
“Imagine if kids poured their time and passion into a video game that taught them math concepts while they barely noticed, because it was so enjoyable,” Bill Gates said last year. Do we want children to “barely notice” when they develop valuable skills? Not to learn that hard work plays a role in that acquisition? It’s important to realize early on that mastery often requires persevering through tedious, repetitive tasks and hard-to-grasp subject matter.Read it all: Reading, Writing and Video Games (New York Times).
How’s this for a radical alternative? Let children play games that are not educational in their free time. . . . Then, once they’re in the classroom, they can challenge themselves. Deliberate practice of less-than-exhilarating rote work isn’t necessarily fun but they need to get used to it — and learn to derive from it meaningful reward, a pleasure far greater than the record high score.
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Deliberate practice of less-than-exhilarating rote work isn’t necessarily fun but they need to get used to it — and learn to derive from it meaningful reward
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Do adults do this?
Most folks I know never derive meaningful reward from rote work. They either find a way to automate it, or they learn to suck it up and be happy that they're collecting a paycheck at the end of the day.
Why should learning be onerous and horrible for anyone? Should only the students who walk into the classroom who already have an intrinsic reward from studying the material (either the thrill of getting an A or - shockingly - an interest in the material for the sake of the material) derive enjoyment from what's being taught?
I understand the pushback against turning class time into a game, but seriously, sometimes things go too far the other way. If you're teaching something via tedious rote work then you might as well make a game of it - and save the the difficult struggling with the material for places where it's actually helpful to struggle.
Learning how to print or write, learning a foreign language, learning to play a musical instrument or a piece of music: I’d say that they all involve a significant investment in rote work that (eventually) yields rewards. I don’t see Paul as saying that all learning should be a matter of rote work; only that rote work is sometimes a necessary part of learning.
A lot of playing sports involves rote work. Lots of it. And it's often even painful. Intellectual rote work doesn't have the surface social payoff that physical rote work has (praise for getting baskets, running faster, jumping higher, a powerful physique), but it strengthens the mind and improves a person's ability to communicate and enjoy the joys available to people who have paid their intellectual "dues."
Hi Michael,
I disagree with the view expressed in your excerpt from Pamela Paul. Ask anybody who's into videogames: They know that "hard work plays a role in" the "develop[ment of] valuable skills"! Pamela obviously does not see the value that gamers see in gamers' skills. But that is her failing, not theirs ((in their view)).
She writes: "It’s important to realize early on that mastery often requires persevering through tedious, repetitive tasks and hard-to-grasp subject matter."
Well, yeah! That is very much like what gamers do. And if you want them to do something other than they do, I think you have to respect them and the things they already do. Thumbs down Pamela.
As for myself, once videogames got more complex than Pitfall and Missile Command I decided to spend my computer time learning to program and learning to use Excel and AutoCAD and such. Learning to make the computer do what I wanted, not just the little man in the videogame.
I suspect that if people like Pamela knew more about computers than the kids know, you couldn't stop the kids from being drawn to the teachers to learn more. Remember the scene in The Social Network where Zuckerberg walks out of computer class? Nobody in that class was there to learn from that teacher.
Look at what she’s arguing though: that learning is not necessarily fun, and that computer games ought not to replace “hands-on, ‘real world’ experiences.” She isn’t writing about skills in gaming; she’s writing about the transformation of subject matter into games.
Food for thought: a Times article about a tech-free school in Silicon Valley. There’s an interesting comment in the article from someone who works in executive communications at Google: “I fundamentally reject the notion you need technology aids in grammar school.” Paul however acknowledges a role for technology in classrooms for the young.
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