Today I was sent an article on video games being good for kids, and how research is being done to develop video games that will help children learn, led me over to the Joan Ganz Cooney Center (which I was unsurprised to find was the NPO behind Sesame Street). Here, I find the extreme opposite to the elements I’ve embraced in Waldorf Education. Then again, the article was published in an issue of a newsletter sent out by the Nielsen Ipi (you know - the guys that figure out how many people are watching the TV shows?). So it’s unsurprising that an article on research being done by a group connected to Sesame Street would find it’s way into the Nielsen news. Especially if it’s encouraging more media for kids and thus more dollars for the industry…
In our own home, we have basically banned television for the kids, and the only TVs in the house are in the little, messy theatre/library in our basement and one in our bedroom that only gets turned on if Brian or I are stuck in bed from illness, and even then we’re more likely to sleep or read a book. Brian and I only watch TV maybe 2-3 evenings a week lately, after the kids are in bed. More often we are watching a movie we’ve rented as opposed to TV shows. Back in the Days Before Children, we were on a first-name basis with the guy at Blockbuster Video and he’d start to worry if one of us hadn’t been to the store in 3 or 4 days. Movies tend to be the cheaper solution than trying to go and see live theatre on any regular basis, so I fell into the addiction to them early. While we’ve often toyed with the idea of cutting the cable, we are of the MTV generation and cutting that line is a painful prospect indeed. However, there are only five or six channels in our “favorites” list, and 3-4 of them are news and weather, so that they can be easy to find when we need them.
In contrast to the lack of accessible television, on the other hand, is my laptop. It has it’s own little place on a tiny desk in the breakfast area, where I tend to spend a lot more time than I’d ever really like. While a part of me would love to cut the cord on this one, I find it unlikely I ever would. This is my social outlet, my entertainment avenue, my dictionary, my encyclopedia, my atlas, my frequent shopping venue, and often my work as well. I see the benefits my computer has for me, and once I thought my own children would be early into them as well. However, everything I’ve read and seen, leads me to keeping the children away from the computer now. As I type this, they are playing happily, uninterested in the text on my screen as they make-believe their way into entertainment. This is not the right age for them to be on the computer. That time will come. Right now they need play, physical movement, and creative outlets. As I sit here myself, there is a limit to my physical movement - I will be stiff by the time I get up again, actually. Even my eyes get tired. I find that I am very glad I took typing class back in high school and that I can look out the window when I’m blogging and let my fingers deal with the typing.
But the Cooney Center would have my kids already sitting here, learning to read so they won’t get left behind the other children. After reading some of their initiatives and other information, my mind wandered forward to the future they are leading towards. In my mind’s eye… in school, each child would be issued something along the lines of a Kindle, instead of textbooks (after all, all those kids with bad backs shouldn’t be carrying heavy textbooks anyway) where their textbooks would be uploaded at the beginning of each year, with the recommended additional reading and learning “aids” for children who have disabilities. Which would be ALL of them, since none of them will have had the advantages of playing outside - why bother when there are learning computer games to keep them occupied. Future Mom wouldn’t want the hassle of them getting dirty. And there are bugs outside! With germs! And Future Mom is far too busy cleaning house with natural, non-toxic, antibacterial, biodegradable wipes to keep an eye on them if they were in the yard… (oops, there’s my cynical side again) Future teacher is really just a steward with a teaching/IT degree, there to make sure the kids don’t have trouble interacting with the workstations in the classroom. Future Mom has already prepared their kids for school with all the best learning games and videos (Future Mom works too, so she can afford all this), so Future Child arrives to the Kindergarten classroom already knowing how to read, write, do basic math, and has excellent hand-eye coordination. Future Child has velcro shoes (laces are too tricky for poor little Jimmy), and tires easily if asked to do anything that isn’t on the Wiv Fit (Future Wii Fit). If you have watched the newest Star Trek movie - think of the scene with young Spock in school. It’s perfect - children in cubbies, learning from screens - better to keep them away from the other children so they won’t do anything foolish, like THINK anything that isn’t on the curriculum. Or, God forbid, using their imagination. Are you watching these TV shows, these computer games? They even lead children through “pretend play” wherein they TELL the children WHAT TO PRETEND! They’re creating a generation that will need to be led by the hand through everything that isn’t inside the proverbial box.
But ”Getting a nod for helping children learn about nutrition, healthy habits, and exercise are Sesame Street’s “Color Me Hungry,” featuring Cookie Monster, and “Dance Dance Revolution,” a mass-market game used in hundreds of schools nationwide,” says the article. That little sentence seems to support my cynical comment above. Instead of watching my daughter stomping around the family room declaring “I am a PRINCE!” as she winds through the maze they’ve made of the furniture in a princess dress and a baseball cap right now, they would have her sitting in front of a computer letting the Cookie Monster teach her so she will “excel”. My son is a skinny little guy and not the strongest stick in the pile, but instead of having him grow stronger and learn self-confidence by climbing trees and jumping rope, they would have him learn to do the same dance moves over and over and over, until they get a high score (teaching a child to be competitive from a young age as well). I am reminded of a car commercial I once saw (yes, I see the irony of using a media reference here, but I never said the upbringing I had was perfect) where a man was telling a child who was coloring to ”stay between the lines”. This was followed by an adult (supposedly the child as a grown-up) driving down the road, between the yellow lines, and then veering to take the car offroad. That’s me - I want to take the car offroad. My media-bogged life, however, tends to keep me quietly here… within the lines. My kids, one the other hand, are busy learning that “rules” and “boundaries” don’t mean “limits”. Their imaginations will take them where they cannot yet go, so they can prepare themselves for the time that they can…
I’ve talked about my views on kids watching TV before. I’ve also seen the effect both TV and the computer will have on my kids. When my son was two, we gave him a computer. We didn’t fully know all the ins and outs of Waldorf yet (we were only just entertaining the idea of that curriculum for if we homeschooled) and didn’t really know. I thought it was brilliant - he loved watching MY computer so much - and I wanted (like all good moms) to give him an early introduction! I put together an old PC and downloaded several free matching games, learning games, etc…
He loved it. ALL HE WANTED TO DO WAS PLAY THAT COMPUTER. At two years old. It wasn’t long before my husband and I were having concerned conversations about our slack-jawed little boy with the glazed over eyes as he matched owl with owl or helped the “dog find it’s bone”. He whined and pleaded if we turned it off. Only a month or so in, and we started limiting his exposure to it. Finally, when our family room in the old house flooded from a burst pipe, we disassembled it and packed it up, never to be seen again. He was still asking for it when we moved into this house. When I got this laptop, he even went so far as to ask if I would give him my old one. But his eyes are bright again, his imagination vivid, and his jaw flapping away with all the stories and wonders of the world he has to share. So my answer was a firm “no.” While I know my kid could easily learn to be a wiz at computers, I remember something that I heard a Waldorf speaker say, not long ago, suggesting that the computer I’m on right now will be obsolete when my children are ready to learn computers. Why would I want to bog them down with today’s technology and then expect them to continue to relearn it over and over as it advances? Better to wait, and let them HAVE their childhood, bright eyes, and imaginations.
The paragraph describing the report on the site says “Children as young as four are immersed in a new gaming culture, but many parents, educators and health professionals, concerned over violence, sexual content, and reports of addiction, do not consider games to be a positive force in children’s lives. Game Changer addressed this critique, offering a new framework to use games to help children learn healthy behaviors, traditional skills like reading and math, and 21st-century strengths such as critical thinking, global learning, and programming design. It specifies how increased national investment in research-based digital games might play a cost-effective and transformative role and provides comprehensive actions steps for media industry, government, philanthropy, and academia to harness the appeal of digital games to improve children’s health and learning.” Nowhere do they seem concerned about children not having a chance to excercise creativity. I’m less concerned about my kids seeing violence or sexual content, to be honest. THAT I can sit down and explain to them. I’m MORE concerned about these “avatars” on the screen giving my children a false idea about what life is supposed to be like and about them dumbing down to my kids at the same time as they are supposed to be “teaching” them to excel. “Stay between the lines…” the commercial reminds me. Because the computer games will be designed to appeal to the majority. The average. And children will be expected to fall into line, tripping over their untied shoelaces as they go. Good little program designers. Now sit. Stand. Dance…
The report itself, I couldn’t read. I did read the executive summary, and the side boxes of information, but the text of the report seemed to have an error in translationg to Adobe. Ironic, since they seem to want all children to learn computer programming as part of the curriculum, that they can’t seem to make the report universally available themselves. They mention several “fitness programs” like the Wii Fit and Dance Dance Revolution and I have to assume that they are proposing that these are good solutions to the problems they mention in another box - obesity, diabetes, and asthma. I found the stuff on health e-games in the side box highly entertaining. It’s as if they propose to tell a man all about fishing and then send him to the store to buy some, assuming that if he ever needs to fish he’ll somehow know how without ever having done the act. In fact, they seem very focused on critical-thinking and problem-solving skills - skills my kids will pick up with their Waldorf Education, while computerless. However, my kids will learn how to sew, cook, farm, and build. Things the computer-taught kids will likely only watch and learn about, instead of DO. So while they will know how a box should be built, mine will be busy building a better box. Probably with more doors and windows.
Okay, enough rant. I have better things to do today. AWAY from my computer…
