As the school year begins, parents and educators are thinking about students shifting gears from the things they’ve spent their summer doing to what they’ll need to do to succeed in their classes. Many may be fretting that students have been playing video games all summer, and wondering what effect this will have on their ability to concentrate and focus.
Instead of wringing our hands, I suggest that video games provide reason to be cautiously optimistic.
Whether playing something as intuitive as Super Mario Bros. or as complex as World of Warcraft, people of all ages have shown themselves capable of focusing on a task for hours on end. They have shown that they are willing to do this for gold coins, shiny stars and high scores that don’t exist anywhere but in an electronic realm of imagination.
If that’s not focus, then I don’t know what is.
Instead of blaming video games for students’ alleged inability to focus, we should ask why some of the educational tasks we ask them to undertake do not get their undivided attention.
We all can lose track of time entirely in a video game, or a movie, or a good book, or an interesting conversation. Why is it that during some other times in front of a screen, or with a book in our hands, we keep clicking to see if we have any new e-mail?
Presumably the reasons are the same for most people all across the age spectrum. A lot of it has to do with what we choose (and what we have been brought up and enculturated) to consider “fun.” If your peer group thinks reading is uncool, then it is. If your peer group were to decide that the video game you love to spend hours playing is lame, the game likely will be phased out if not dropped immediately.
A lot also has to do with our personal motivation. It is possible to choose to cultivate an interest in something. It may not be possible to simply will it into the category of “fun things to do,” any more than we can will a food we dislike into the category of foods we enjoy. But certainly one can, through repeated exposure, learn to tolerate or even appreciate the taste. And on the other hand, it is certainly the case that, if we have our minds made up beforehand that something is a waste of time and no fun at all, we’re unlikely to enjoy it. Most of us have at some point approached a video game, TV show or style of music that we personally didn’t find appealing, but which was important to someone we cared about, and so we went in determined to enjoy it if we could. Often, we were successful.
From the educator’s end, there are often things we can do to liven up a class and make it more interesting. Most likely this will not involve adding a backing track of game music and sound effects to lectures, or placing Wii remotes in students’ hands for classroom activities. But we can make an effort to provide students with academic challenges that follow the key rule for video game creation: if it is too easy it will be boring, and if it is too hard it will be frustrating and the player will lose interest. We need to present students with challenges that they can realistically hope to “beat” with appropriate time and effort. Beyond that, nothing generates enthusiasm better than the contagious enthusiasm of others. If we as educators don’t find the course material fascinating, exciting, stimulating and relevant, then it will be no surprise if students fail to show much interest. But if we “play the game” in their presence and are clearly enjoying ourselves, students are more likely to want to join in and try it for themselves.
So the challenge is not to turn off video games permanently so that we can stop being distracted from things that really matter. Rather, the challenge is for us to find ways to focus the same attention we devote to getting a high score to learning a new language, reading a book, wrestling with philosophical arguments and engaging in other activities of lasting value.
Those things may not, at first glance, look like as much fun. But they can be, and more than that, they offer rewards that will be with you long after the name of that game you used to play is all but forgotten.
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