Very interesting class today. I was glad to hear both presenters. I am not so excited about what
Barbara talked about with regards to games. I do think that there is a lot of room for games and game play in learning, but the existing games that we have, or that we talked about are based on some pretty unhealthy things. For example:
1. Barbara talked about their use for learning skills vs critical theory, these games seem available to help motivate kids and help folks learn skills and content they are not interested in as opposed to challenging the reasons why we are teaching those skills and content.
2. A quick cursory look at World of Warcraft immediately showed a world of stereotypes. Seriously though there was a lot of stereotypical depictions of the characters as substituting for racial groups. In addition to some pretty heavy racial and cultural stereotypes there was a great deal of content that was quite sexist. This, added to the ubiquitous violence of such games, really makes these things that I don't think that we should be recommending. They are about violence in many forms.
3. So Barbara's answer to all this was that these become good teaching tools because then you can have discussions around sexism, racism and violence about being critical of these aspects. But the games themselves are still not really being used as educational tools. I mean, that is equatable to saying "go watch tv." Now this is not to say that I am opposed to people playing games and entertainment only for entertainments sake, but lets not pretend that just because it is something that kids like it is necessarily healthy.
4. Games are like candy or other hyper rapid feedback rewards. Except folks are being rewarded for buying into socialization around militarism, colonialism, racism, sexism and violence. Even if there are no studies proving that that makes people more violent, I don't know that it is still something that I want to promote.
5. This idea of immediate feedback also encourages external motivation instead of intrinsic motivation. Even if games can help increase problem solving and critical thinking skills, they seemingly are antithetical (at least this World of Warcraft) to critical theory. There is a big difference. Critical theory asks that we try to understand and provide a social critique, while this seems to be a heightened form of socialization into current, dominant norms and values of colonial society. To me, this seems dangerous. Remember video games were initially developed by the US military to teach and desensitize people to killing.
6. The other thing was that she talked about learning about markets, supply demand etc….capitalism. Well WAIT a minute….capitalism is a bad thing and we should be critiquing it not just learning how to play in it.
7. Finally, Barbara talked about marginalized students being able to reinvent their identity. I would bet as someone with power in an artificial world. This doesn’t help to critique or challenge real socialization and power relationships, privilege or white supremacy. I would worry games like this justify privilege and power and encourage marginalized kids to believe in oppressive systems and that they should not only be a part of them, but that perhaps they can steal away some of that power. In the real world how they then see their own powerlessness and inability to gain it, not as a failure of society and systematic oppression but as their own fault and failure as a people. This reinforces the cultural deficit model and decreases any opportunity for social critique.
