What makes two smart but small and decidedly non-athletic middle school boys want to risk life and limb to try out for the school football team? Their teacher Bill Ferriter was shocked at their answer. “”We’re going to be great at football,” they replied. “We completely dominate in Madden 2008 on our PlayStations. No one can beat us!”
These two boys who had never played an organized sport in their life—-let alone an organized sport where physicality is essential for success and where brutal hits are commonplace—-had convinced themselves that football was the right sport for them because of their video game prowess. In their minds, mastering skills with digital players on an electronic field in their living rooms translated somehow into an belief that they would excel on a real field wearing real pads trying to tackle 200-pound kids without breaking their necks!
Ferriter, a North Carolina teacher who writes the superb blog The Tempered Radical, is concerned about the “false transparency” created by video games. Kids claim to be good at playing the guitar because they’ve mastered Guitar Hero. Or they express an interest in becoming soldiers because “war seems fun” after playing Call of Duty. “Becoming more ‘realistic’ by the year, new digital toys seem to provide the ‘complete experience’for users who walk away believing that they ‘know’ just what it means to be a rock star, battlefield general, or super-jock,” Ferriter writes.
Deeply strange. And disturbing. Ferriter, who is typically bullish on technology-assisted learning, worries this false transparency is hurting kids.
I’m just starting to wonder whether one of the unintended consequences of easy access to electronic experience is that we’re raising a generation of children who have a flawed sense of their personal strengths and weaknesses? Are middle schoolers—-who love fantasy and imagination to begin with—confused, failing to find the line between fiction and reality when determining what they “know” and “can do?”
Interesting and provocative insights from one of our most thoughtful classroom observers.
(HT: Anthony Rebora)
Seconding your statement that “Tempered Radical” is a great blog…
As a long-time middle school teacher, I’ve always been struck by the fact that we treat them like children, giving them almost no real responsibilities, just as they are approaching the physical manifestations of maturity, and separating from their parents. In other times and cultures, there were/are formalized rituals around coming to manhood and womanhood.
In one sense, adolescents have created their own quests to prove themselves adults, using the tools they have available. They try out virtual roles that involve danger and daring. The 8th grade trip to the amusement park (an annual ritual at my school) always involves riding the scariest rides the most times–and buying your girlfriend (who is too afraid to ride) some popcorn afterward. They’re safe (and unreal) ways prove your manhood.
Of course, there are many “real” things young adolescents can do, to make a difference in the world.
So what are you suggesting, Nancy? Is Ferriter misreading his students? Are they aware of the dangers but determined to prove themselves on the gridiron? Do you see some of the blurring of the lines between the virtual world and the real world he’s concerned about?
No, I think he’s on to something–that the virtual world fills their need to display courage and prowess, but the gratification and affirmation they get there is false. (Or virtual…) I do see a blurring of the lines. I used the roller coaster as a pre-virtual example–seeking ways to display your maturity is an evolved human characteristic. But with omnipresent realistic virtual simulations, the ante is upped, and students begin to believe that being awesome on Guitar Hero means you’re a radical musician.
But no.
Kids really do need genuine ways to prove their growing skills and strengths–things not found on screens.
On the other hand, technology can sometimes provide individuals the assistance to overcome one particular area of weakness and allow them to develop talents they otherwise couldn’t. For example, I am horrible at drawing on paper, so I never enjoyed art class as a child. But as it turns out, I actually have a fairly good eye for design. Using the computer, I am able to compensate for my lack of skill in drawing and create decent-looking stuff.