Cub Scouts sure play a mean pinball
The Scouts are now giving awards for video gaming expertise.
It’s not quite as bad as it sounds:
Apparently these new awards are geared toward making Scouts understand which games are appropriate for their age group, not just rewarding them for sitting around on their butts playing video games. Scouts also can work towards their pin by playing a video game that “helps you in your schoolwork.”
But it’s bad enough.
> But it’s bad enough.
I don’t see this as a problem. Video games teach hand-eye coordination and quick mental response times. They teach pattern recognition and long-chain memory retention. They teach patience with performing repetitive, even monotonous tasks.
As such, they are hardly the awful thing often painted as by mindlessly caterwauling demagogues looking to paint them as this generations’ “Seduction of the Innocent”.
In the case of many, they go further, as any adult who attempted to play Dance Dance Revolution can attest to — they DON’T need to reduce one to a mere drooling couch potato — with proper selection, they can, in fact, make up for some of the lack of physical activity already common thanks to the widespread discontinuation of PE programs at many schools.
Proper selection of the games used to attain merit badges would involve a lot of attention to games demanding physical activity, typically WII games and anything that involves extensive physical action.
Finally, this is an attempt by scouting to maintain a certain connection with modern life that would otherwise lead to long-term social failure — if kids don’t see what it involves as fun, useful, AND informative about life, then they won’t find it interesting and entertaining. When kids don’t see any possible use in their lives for “woodcraft”, then why will they want to get merit badges in it? And if too many of the merit badges become things like that, then why will they want to engage in scouting?
And scouting does have important social aspects to it — it teaches many socially virtuous values which run counter to many of the social forces children are exposed to, which virtues provide the “cement” that society needs to function. So society needs scouting to maintain its attraction to young people.
I don’t think you’re really considering this, Neo — I think you have a common adult’s view of video games that they are a waste of time which serve no purpose and have no possible value, and from that are getting a knee-jerk reaction to this. I believe you are wrong in both elements. While there are certainly bad video games, I hardly suspect that those games will be chosen or recommended for use with regards to the merit badges.
😉
P.S., I’d also point out — if you can play DDR on the highest level for 20 minutes, as my friends’ 10yo son can, you would not worry much about the health of today’s kids. Try and find someone who has it, and play it on a medium level for even *5* minutes… unless you are in unusually good shape, you’ll be quite out of breath.
It also seems to me that video games may be a good learning tool for remotely piloting drone aircraft, which will only become more commonplace in the future, both in the military and civilian arenas.
This will be un-PC, but after reading “Academia, Harvard Law School, and freedom of speech”, I can’t help it.
Cub Scouts are small boys. Cub Scout leaders are invariably women. As we know, small boys in elementary schools, mostly taught by women, are considered disruptive and are often medicated out of their boyishness. (I know-oversimplified, but too little time and space.)
Any reason to think that video games are being used as a substitute, because prescribing Ritalin during pack meetings is still too hard?
Today’s US military relies on videogaming skills. Remotely piloting an aircraft and remotely operating a weapons turret both require the ability to visualize the entire scene through a small view, while tracking those areas you do NOT know and controlling the motion of the platform and view without any seat-of-the-pants intertial sensation.
This was not luck; it was design. Ten years ago, the military planners were looking at the likely weaknesses of new recruits; they had the good sense to look for strengths as well.
Hmmm – anyone remember the movie, “The Last Starfighter” – about a kid who was a genius at a particular video-game, and it turned out the game was a screening tool for intergalactic military recruiters?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Starfighter
Fiction following real life, or real life following fiction?
Sgt. Mom: I loved “The Last Starfighter.” Saw it when my son was young.
I too am one that thinks the idea that games are bad is, well, uninformed at best. Lets take what most people want their kids out doing – playing outside.
First off – good luck with that one. TV is too big a draw and TV is a switch to turn your mind off. No other way to talk about it, even “educational” shows are still mostly mind off – that is why many of us watch it. It has its place, we can’t all be “on” all the time, but it isn’t good for most of the time.
Now, lets assume they do go outside – great. Now what is there to do? All sorts of nice things, from bad to good. Most will simply hang out with friends and goof off, not really “intellectually stimulating” to say the least nor is it athletic. It’s a nice step up from TV but still mostly a vegetative state.
Some will be active, play sports, explore the world, etc and in this case I see nothing better to do than that. Which games they choose to play will tell me if I see them on equal footing or not, but many games are just stimulating in different ways, not better or worse.
Now, as for gaming. Lets say I play Lord of the Rings Online. My main is Warden, a so called “tank”. I try and keep all the enemies out there attacking me. I may have 10+ that I have to keep track of and depending on the raid 12-24 other people to watch where they are, what is attacking them, and make split second decisions if what is happening is correct. That means I have to read 12-24 concise descriptions of peoples vitals whilst watching what is going on with 30+ different entities on my screen.
Further I have somewhere around 30 or so viable skills that have to be used in the right order, at the right time, and *anticipate* that from an *extremely* variable environment. I have to decide on those based on those above situational variables that I am having to keep tract of.
Out side of highly dangerous environments that I think most of us agree we shouldn’t be in I have yet to find *anything* that taxes my ability to keep track of my surroundings as much as that does.
The failing to me is that games have little to no physical element (while the Nintendo WII has it the games for it are mostly not challenging otherwise). Most of the longer term popular games are MUCH more mentally stressful than most things you will get into in real life. This is why the US military has put that much focus on them – they can deal with the physical conditioning easily, not so much the mental.
Kids are coming out today with hours of gaming understanding team tactics, performance under stress (and few non-gamers ever seem to understand how much personal stress you put on yourself in these situations), and a high mental agility not seen before. Too many think of pong and early games where the reality now is that many meet or exceed the complexity given in Chess. Few would complain about playing Chess yet will for games that require MUCH more situational awareness and strategy.
If I had any issue with it, it would be that they require it to be “educational” which means math, spelling, or reading oriented and games are *horrid* at that as the main point. Those are boring, non-stressful, and not applicable to anything other than a person 40+ thinking they are doing good.
Give a kid a game that is fun, requires a VERY high degree of hand-eye co-ordination, a high degree of ability to process many inputs (positional 3-d sound and on screen information), and add in the need to calculate efficiencies in order to beat the other person or encounter and you will see hours spent learning the math and abilities. If you really want I can find some long threads on gaming forums that even evolve into calculus. Give them a game that has them seeing who can add these numbers faster and you get worthless. Sadly the latter is often considered “educational” whilst the former is wasting time.
I’m really the first generation of gamers – that is I do not recall a time when video games were not somewhat popular (born in 1975). I’m a minority in how strongly I like to play them (a lot, I find myself mostly playing with people 10 years my junior) but what would be my kids generation (had I any – which I do not) are the first to truly see them as ubiquitous. I do think the idea of gaming is becoming more mainstream because of this – my age and younger are quite familiar with what video games actually are.
Steven Johnson’s Everything Bad Is Good For You gives additional positives derived from videogames. He is quite persuasive. Ten years ago I was a deplorer of said games as anything other than a diversion which children might engage in for limited periods of time for entertainment. Now on my fifth 14 y/o boy, I look at them differently.
good advice and sharing,I will buy one this great pants for me .thanks