Things We’re Tired Of
I’m tired as a write this. You’re probably tired as you read this. We are a country of tired people. A new study has come out saying that we don’t need as much sleep as we thought we did, but yet we still don’t even get the recommended reduced amount.
Does it seem like standards and norms are being reduced to meet society, rather than society striving to meet the standards? This started years ago with the SAT scores. Too many kids were scoring poorly on the test, so, rather than teach the kids more with better methods the questions on the SATs were dumbed down.
In a recent discussion on the negative impact of video games, Dr. Maurice Ramirez said, “It’s not that there is anything wrong with our children’s 21st century brains, it’s that we’re trying to teach them with 17th century technology.”
Dr. Ramirez went on to question what would happen if the much ballyhooed ‘No Child Left Behind’ curriculum were handed over to video game programmers and utilized as the rules, processes and systems of a series of role playing adventure video games? In his opinion:
- The entire K-8 curriculum would be mastered in two and a half years
- Four years of high school would be completed within 18 months
- The first two years of college would be completed by the end of eighth grade
- Recall and application in excess of 90% accuracy and proficiency
When computers first came out, the joke used to be that kids were being taught by teachers whose VCRs still blinked 12:00. Now that role playing adventure games have become so realistic, the real joke is that kids who master the games are being taught by teachers who still have VCRs.
