Video Games and Composition

Yesterday, in my composition class, my group presented an article titled “Gaming, Student Literacies and the Composition Classroom” by Jonathan Alexander. The article discusses literacies and skills gained from playing MMORPGs and how these skills can work in a classroom setting. Of course, I was more than excited for the lesson and the discussion, but I was surprised to find some opposition to the idea of video games in a classroom.

First, download my PowerPoint on Dwarf Fortress – Video Game Composition

The main arguments broke down like this:

1) Video games do not belong in a general education English course.

2) Video games are violent, sexist, and sometimes racist and are therefore have no place in an academic setting.

3) Studying video games has no “real world application”

The following is the response I left on our discussion board and seems to be going with the theme of this blog lately of “THIS IS REVOLUTION!!!”

First, let’s set some parameters (something we should have done in class today). Do video games belong in a standard ENG 110 classroom curriculum? Probably not, but there are a lot of things that I wouldn’t put in the ENG 110 classroom because they don’t fit. For instance, Victorian Women’s literature wouldn’t fit either. No one is arguing for a video game lesson in a gen ed classroom because it’s just not feasible.

So, what ARE we talking about? What about a class that is specifically designed to explore video games and composition? With this, students who were interested in the subject as an elective could choose the course and not offend the sensibilities of other students who wouldn’t want that to be part of a curriculum.

I’m not merely addressing the issues of sexism, racism, and extreme violence that occur in some video games, but I understand that not all students would be interested and that’s fine. While we’re on the subject of controversy in a medium, I can’t help but find the argument against something because of a few examples to be the weakest argument that is related to this issue. To write off all games as being unworthy of study simply because of a few examples would be like saying that literature shouldn’t be studied because Hemingway was a sexist. Come to think of it, I suppose Adolf Hitler and Glenn Beck wrote books as well, so we better avoid reading altogether.

Now that we have established the form of the class, let’s discuss the function and justification for the class.

It bothered me to hear so much being made of the “real world application” argument in class today because it seems to be a tired one within English studies. It seems to me that the question we most discuss is “why do we study ______?” In terms of practicality, video game composition could even be seen as more useful than most literary studies #ohnohedidn’t #ohyesIdid

To me, video game composition is important because here we have this powerful tool called the internet and it isn’t being used correctly in the slightest. Internet message boards could easily be a forum to exchange ideas and better understand one another, but instead, they are used as soapboxes for people to spread their narrow, selfish, and sometimes bigoted ideas. In a perfect world, internet composition would be used to eradicate this.

EXPERIMENT! – Go to any message board, or news story and read the comments then try and tell me that educational discourse occurs there without erupting into laughter. You. Can’t. Do. It.

In addition to exchanging ideas with one another, students need to learn to collaborate with one another and while group work is all fine and dandy, how often do group members get by without doing anything? Contributing to a wiki or a discussion board on a topic is a perfect way to monitor student comprehension and if it is on a topic they enjoy like gaming, then they will be more willing to contribute, they will be learning the importance of community, and they are doing so in a fun environment.

Also, agree or disagree with his politics all you like, but President Obama understands the importance of video games in education –

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6241210.html

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6276261.html

The purpose of education is to make students intelligent, functioning members of our society and by NOT teaching students how to interact properly with the medium they enjoy, then we aren’t doing our jobs as educators. Whatever happened to the idea of changing the world through education? Are we so callous and jaded as to think that we can’t change how people interact with video games by educating them to do better?

Listen, I know that you’re scared. I know that the idea of video games in a classroom setting upsets you and that’s okay. There was a time when the only literature that was studied was the “classics” and it’s taken a long time to get education to where it is today. You’re scared because you don’t understand, but think about all of the mistakes made in education because people weren’t willing to listen and learn about things they don’t understand. Can you imagine our curriculum being like this –

http://www.archives.upenn.edu/primdocs/upl/upl1/upl1_1851_52.pdf#page=30

There is nothing in this world that we can’t learn from in some way and that is the beauty of education.