[AGL] X-box? Soap box

[Frances Morey]

"...lot of students bored silly by classroom instruction...," Jon wrote.
   
  That is such a sad posture for someone whose career has been spent teaching. If the students are bored it's because their teacher has neglected to create a schedule of learning that challenges their individual young minds. If learning isn't fun, the teacher has been reduced to an attendance taking roboton. Someone once noted that if a young person has one admirable teacher out of eight, their attitudes towards learning may be salvaged.
   
  There is a presumption of kids being bored, and a presumptuousness, because the kids have trained themselves to act like they know-it-all and have nothing left to learn.
  They are only in the classroom to ogle the opposite sex (or the same sex) and see how little effort they can put-in to pass from one grade to the next, like little spoiled (neglected?) kid-brats. They are there because the law says that they must be, and the teachers are there to take home a paycheck, being reduced to prison guards.
   
  Video games are a great babysitter. With enough time devoted to playing them they often become an obsession, eating up scads of precious time to the detriment of all other aspects of the adolescence's development. Such people will become parents who wish as little involvement with children as possible, such people probably learned it from their own parents who might have treated them as though they were a nuisance and a burden. Lots of prof's kids suffered from this.
   
  Nothing personal, Jon. This is just my educational philosophy. It is the teacher's job to make it exciting, so the students don't turn out to be intelligent design creationists, for Christ's sakes, or automaton know-nothings who wouldn't question authority if it bit them on the butt.
   
  Happy Thanksgiving, y'all,
  Frances
   
  

Wayne Johnson <cadaobh at shentel.net> wrote:
  Naturally, Jon manages to miss the point even while he makes his point.

Of course, "education" is boring, no "Spam, Blat" No bigggg boobs, nothing 
to Kill" Can't expect American kids to keep on their determined 
Entertainment first, Education last approach to life if they are required 
"think" instead of "react". Action now, rhetoric...critical 
thinking...language usage...later...if at all. Learn everything about the 
world by seeing it on a 6x6 box as determined by Japanese programmers. So 
much easier than "listening". Who needs dialectic or literacy or theory of 
numbers or phenomenology when one can spend hours fantasizing murder and 
rape? Why bother with dissection when one can simulate NASCAR? Why bother 
with learning "complicated" things like physics, chemistry or 
....gasp...biology, when one can just play with a "black box" or believe in 
one?

"Ooooh, Mommy. That mean old scientist makes my brain hurt!"
"Don't worry, Muffy, we will be safely back in Kansas tomorrow."

But then such subtleties bypass some people who must constantly tell 
themselves (and others) that "they" are the "most hip" while others cocoon 
themselves in what some might call "elitist literary snobbery". Interesting 
concatentation. Gee, if only the two could be mixed.

"Fight the Texas War of Revolution! On the Mexican Side! At home! With 
Game Person X"
"Thrill to the atrocities of the Rape of Nanking!" Who? Nan King? Oh, 
cool, dude."
"Learn how Real Christians fight Apostasy, play "Inquisition!"
"Play the New Tunnel Rat!"
"Win points on Enola Gay over the Medici."
"Vanquish the Green Knight with Madonna!"
"Pokemon vs Shakespeare".

the mind boggles....or "bobbles" for some.

wgJ


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jon Ford" 
To: 
Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2005 11:51 AM
Subject: Re: [AGL] X-box?


>
> Mike, your quip is right on the money! Unlike Harry Potter films and 
> high school classes, the new media are interactive, leaving a lot of 
> students bored silly by classroom instruction. A book on video games 
> people should read, which gives us some insights into learning and gaming 
> is James Gee's
> "What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy" (Palgrave 
> MacMillan).
>
> >
> Talk about decorticating the brain.>
>
> Mike
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Wayne Johnson" 
> To: "survivors' reminiscences about Austin Ghetto Daze in the 60s" 
> 
> Sent: Tuesday, November 22, 2005 11:33 AM
> Subject: Re: [AGL] X-box?
>
>
> Honor and I talked with a local teacher whilst standing in line the other 
> night for Harry Potter. Part of this (sad) conversation was the 
> revelation that his (high school level) kids....can not take notes, can 
> not follow an "oral" argument and can only take notes if they are 
> "bulletized" a la Power Point. He assigns this horrid situation to a 
> (young) lifetime of ......game playing.
>
>
> 

  

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