All,
Here's the link and text.
Dave
Friday, November 04, 2005
Mind Games
Broadcast by April Lidinsky on November 04, 2005
http://www.mchron.net/ee/radio/2005/11/04/
Ask any kid in Indiana to tell you about the ISTEP standardized tests, and you’ll get an earful. The tests were administered a few weeks ago, and the results won’t be published until December, but the kids’ reviews are already in: “Boring!” “Pointless!” “Worse than cafeteria Sloppy Joes!” My daughters and their friends have written wicked parodies of the tests, capturing the preachy nature of the questions: “Which is most lethal? A) poison; B) LSD; C) cocaine; or D) the ISTEP test.” Their parodies also illuminate the quietly bullying tone of the test:”Put your pencil down. Do not go on. If you move, we’ll hit you with a stick.”
Maybe what standardized tests reveal most is the jagged canyon separating what grown-ups think kids should know, and what kids actually find important and interesting. Grown-ups want kids to estimate speeding trains. Kids would rather figure hit points in YuGiOh battles. This is not anti-intellectualism; kids love to master knowledge – the more complex and arcane the better. How else to explain the cachet in kid culture of reeling off baseball stats, or recalling the Latinate names and effects of the myriad spells in Harry Potter books? Kids get that knowledge is power. But whose knowledge?
Not long ago, I mused over this question with friends, snacking on nachos and beer while our children played Dungeons and Dragons in the other room. Now, for the uninitiated, Dungeons and Dragons is a role-playing game that requires the mastery of incredibly esoteric details about monsters, skills, magic spells, and character traits. One mother, an accomplished academic, half-heartedly lamented, “Why doesn’t my son learn actual information? His head is crammed with knowledge, statistics, and details, but mostly about fictional characters and situations. Why not put all that brain power to better use?” I pondered this, sipped my beer, and tried to recall actual information I’d learned in school. Hmmm. Well, I remember exactly the strange smell of the rug in the sophomore language arts room ... and, oh, yeah, I remember perfectly how cute my AP History teacher looked in that blue argyle sweater ... the one that matched his eyes.
How ‘bout you? The statistics are pretty damning about what most of us remember from school. I dare you to weigh the classroom knowledge in your head against the rubble of everything else: the Beatles lyrics, phone numbers that no longer ring anywhere, snippets of favorite books or scenes from movies. I may despair, myself, about how much of my daughters’ brain space is taken up with details about the initiative points of halfling rogues, but their ownership of that information is what gives it meaning. While the parents engaged in idle chatter that night, the kids were bent over elaborate character-development sheets, consulting thick manuals and looking for all the world like they were studying for medical exams. “Havin’ fun?” I asked. “Yup!” they said sheepishly, “We know, it looks like homework, but it’s so cool!” They happily worked ...er, played ... for hours.
The content of our educations matters far less, really, than the skills we acquire and the pleasure we learn to take in approaching new ideas. This is the argument Steven Johnson makes in his appealingly titled book, Everything Bad is Good for You. He suggests that the increasingly demanding complexity of pop culture fosters skills that ready us for a world of bewilderingly complex systems and constant new information. As part of this sea-change, universities across the nation are re-evaluating the balance of content-acquisition and skill-development in their curricula. What’s most essential to becoming an educated person: mastery over a body of knowledge, or the skills to engage meaningfully with whatever new knowledge comes along?
For all the fantasy of a game like Dungeons and Dragons, when you add the cognitive research and recall workout you get with the ethical and diplomatic skills essential to a player’s success, you get a curricula for producing real world citizens with skills that are frighteningly lacking in, say, our “real” administration’s leaders. Ultimately, the difference between kid knowledge and grown-up knowledge may be that kids understand the facts they love to master might be fantasy, but the skills they acquire for negotiating those meanings are the real deal. The grown-ups seem to have it all backwards, neglecting the skills necessary for lifelong learning, and refusing to admit their facts are as much the product of fantasy as any Dungeon-master’s dream.
Here's the link and text.
Dave
Friday, November 04, 2005
Mind Games
Broadcast by April Lidinsky on November 04, 2005
http://www.mchron.net/ee/radio/2005/11/04/
Ask any kid in Indiana to tell you about the ISTEP standardized tests, and you’ll get an earful. The tests were administered a few weeks ago, and the results won’t be published until December, but the kids’ reviews are already in: “Boring!” “Pointless!” “Worse than cafeteria Sloppy Joes!” My daughters and their friends have written wicked parodies of the tests, capturing the preachy nature of the questions: “Which is most lethal? A) poison; B) LSD; C) cocaine; or D) the ISTEP test.” Their parodies also illuminate the quietly bullying tone of the test:”Put your pencil down. Do not go on. If you move, we’ll hit you with a stick.”
Maybe what standardized tests reveal most is the jagged canyon separating what grown-ups think kids should know, and what kids actually find important and interesting. Grown-ups want kids to estimate speeding trains. Kids would rather figure hit points in YuGiOh battles. This is not anti-intellectualism; kids love to master knowledge – the more complex and arcane the better. How else to explain the cachet in kid culture of reeling off baseball stats, or recalling the Latinate names and effects of the myriad spells in Harry Potter books? Kids get that knowledge is power. But whose knowledge?
Not long ago, I mused over this question with friends, snacking on nachos and beer while our children played Dungeons and Dragons in the other room. Now, for the uninitiated, Dungeons and Dragons is a role-playing game that requires the mastery of incredibly esoteric details about monsters, skills, magic spells, and character traits. One mother, an accomplished academic, half-heartedly lamented, “Why doesn’t my son learn actual information? His head is crammed with knowledge, statistics, and details, but mostly about fictional characters and situations. Why not put all that brain power to better use?” I pondered this, sipped my beer, and tried to recall actual information I’d learned in school. Hmmm. Well, I remember exactly the strange smell of the rug in the sophomore language arts room ... and, oh, yeah, I remember perfectly how cute my AP History teacher looked in that blue argyle sweater ... the one that matched his eyes.
How ‘bout you? The statistics are pretty damning about what most of us remember from school. I dare you to weigh the classroom knowledge in your head against the rubble of everything else: the Beatles lyrics, phone numbers that no longer ring anywhere, snippets of favorite books or scenes from movies. I may despair, myself, about how much of my daughters’ brain space is taken up with details about the initiative points of halfling rogues, but their ownership of that information is what gives it meaning. While the parents engaged in idle chatter that night, the kids were bent over elaborate character-development sheets, consulting thick manuals and looking for all the world like they were studying for medical exams. “Havin’ fun?” I asked. “Yup!” they said sheepishly, “We know, it looks like homework, but it’s so cool!” They happily worked ...er, played ... for hours.
The content of our educations matters far less, really, than the skills we acquire and the pleasure we learn to take in approaching new ideas. This is the argument Steven Johnson makes in his appealingly titled book, Everything Bad is Good for You. He suggests that the increasingly demanding complexity of pop culture fosters skills that ready us for a world of bewilderingly complex systems and constant new information. As part of this sea-change, universities across the nation are re-evaluating the balance of content-acquisition and skill-development in their curricula. What’s most essential to becoming an educated person: mastery over a body of knowledge, or the skills to engage meaningfully with whatever new knowledge comes along?
For all the fantasy of a game like Dungeons and Dragons, when you add the cognitive research and recall workout you get with the ethical and diplomatic skills essential to a player’s success, you get a curricula for producing real world citizens with skills that are frighteningly lacking in, say, our “real” administration’s leaders. Ultimately, the difference between kid knowledge and grown-up knowledge may be that kids understand the facts they love to master might be fantasy, but the skills they acquire for negotiating those meanings are the real deal. The grown-ups seem to have it all backwards, neglecting the skills necessary for lifelong learning, and refusing to admit their facts are as much the product of fantasy as any Dungeon-master’s dream.
