I have always been generally opposed to video games and am very uneasy with the presence of an X-Box in our house. Our boys love video and computer games. I have always been convinced video games were bad for my kids and have tried to limit their exposure. Video games are lumped into the same category as junk food in my mind.

In our house we read books. We play chess. We eat whole grains.

Well, earlier this week I purchased a magazine titled “Ode: For Intelligent Optimists.” I was intrigued by a featured article titled, “The future of homework: Why our children absorb more in an arcade than in a classroom—and what schools can learn from that.”

Fascinating read! Here's the link to the article online. It is an impressive argument for gaming in general and the use of games in the classroom, at home, and even in hospitals. This entire article is very challenging to my current mindset. Here’s one of the sidebars that blew me away:

If video games had come before books

.... this is what critics would say.

“Reading books chronically understimulates the senses. Unlike the long-standing tradition of game playing—which engages the child in a vivid, three-dimensional world filled with moving images and musical soundscapes, navigated and controlled with complex muscular movements—books are simply a barren string of words on a page.

Books are also tragically isolating. While games have for many years engaged the young in complex social relationships with their peers, building and exploring worlds together, books force the child to sequester him-or herself in a quiet space, shut off from interaction with other children. These new ‘libraries’ that have arisen in recent years are a frightening sight: dozens of young children, normally so vivacious and socially interactive, sitting alone in cubicles, reading silently, oblivious to their peers.

But perhaps the most dangerous of these books is the fact that they follow a fixed linear path. You can’t control their narratives in any fashion—you simply sit back & have the story dictated to you. This risks instilling a general passivity in our children, making them feel as though they're powerless to change their circumstances. Reading is not an active, partcipatory process; it’s a submissive one. The book readers of the younger generation are learning to ‘follow the plot’ instead of learning to lead.”

Labels: interesting concepts, kids, life of a mom