Education and Entertainment Two sides of the same coin

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my name is naomi

and my work requires me to do many

different things

i make documentary films about social

and political themes

i design immersive and interactive

experiences through media

i have experimented with virtual reality

storytelling

and recently i am teaching myself

ludology

just the act of studying and playing

games

and i’m really lucky to be able to

follow my curiosity

it’s a fortunate place to be

but this approach also requires me to be

a lifelong student

i constantly need to learn new skills

upgrade and involve my thinking

but all this learning is self-initiated

that means that i don’t use school to do

them

i use the internet don’t write me off

just yet

back when i was in school i felt

demotivated

and uninspired like i didn’t have a

choice

over what i got to learn back then

learning for me was just a means to an

end

the end being exams i had this

dysfunctional belief

that my grades would determine my future

and i didn’t have very good grades and

so i didn’t feel entitled to the life

that i wanted

what i didn’t realize back then so

there’s never really an

end to learning especially in the world

we live in now

at the pace at which it is evolving we

constantly need to adapt

to new knowledge and new skills

so i had a bit of unlearning to do

it might be important at this point to

distinguish between learning and

schooling

the truth is that i wasn’t bad at

learning

it was just bad at learning in the way

that it was prescribed in school

and it isn’t just me this is the

experience of countless students out

there

even today there are some reasons for

this

our schooling system was built in a

different era

the industrial revolution had created a

need to rapidly teach

a lot of people very specific skills

create mass literacy and we

industrialized learning too

but we lost something in transition

we lost the ability to pay attention to

individuals

and their personal learning journeys

but the industrial revolution is done

and we live in a post google post

wikipedia age

on the internet reality is no longer

stagnant

lifeless unadaptive like how it is

in a textbook or a lecture

we now have the world’s information the

tip of our fingers

this is just indicative of how complex

our world has become

and to meet these challenges the 21st

century needs new skills

it requires us to be more creative while

solving problems

and not just following orders it

requires us to think more critically

about the information we consume not

really memorize it through root learning

anymore

we need to collaborate across

disciplines not to stay confined

in our neatly designated fields

we need to understand things effectively

in order to be able to communicate

at scale so when we have

already recognized all of this

why have our institutes fail to adjust

to these methods

let’s ask ourselves a question as a

community

one that would benefit not just us but

more importantly the generations that

come after us

how might we foster a better

relationship towards learning

through methods that meet the demands of

the 21st century

while being in a profession that is all

about creating experiences

and telling stories there have been some

interesting takeaways that i have had

and some of these takeaways might lend

itself

to enhancing education as we know it

have you noticed that adults and

children

alike never feel like it’s a chore when

they watch a movie

or play a sport or do something that’s

considered fun

this is what differentiates

entertainment from education

let’s take a look at films as a medium

everybody recognizes its capacity to

entertain us

to absorb us in its stories we need to

be able to acknowledge

that these stories have the power of

transmitting ideas

consciously or subconsciously through

its plot

or its characters we can relate to

perspectives

of those outside of ourselves and tap

into what is known

as empathy sure we can learn about the

histories of a place through a text

or hear about how climate change affects

us through a lecture

what we what but what we miss out on is

what is happening to people

under the surface the thing is that we

are hardwired to learn

through one another’s experiences

back in the stone age our ancestors

sat around a fire exchanging anecdotes

that were crucial to our survival and

reproduction

and that helped us navigate the world

think of stories as a vessel

that store and transmit crucial

learnings

or a map that indicates to us social

moral behavior

teaches us values in character but they

can also entertain us

delight us move us anger us make us

question

take for instance a documentary called

an insignificant man

this was the first film that i worked on

professionally

and it transformed the way i saw stories

forever

for those who don’t know the film

explores the rise

of a novice party called the aam agni

party

and the journey of a regular common man

known as arvin kejriwal

who becomes the first time chief

minister of delhi

we can all relate to the story of an

underdog fighting an

uphill battle that seems to have

overwhelming odds

right a story that leverages the human

experience

of struggling and overcoming something

that is larger than ourselves

and hence being a conduit for larger

ideas and conversations

in the screenings that we had across the

country film

actually triggered conversations such as

is democracy just limited to our ability

to vote

once in five years or is it more than

that

how much participation or regular people

should a democracy allow

we saw conversations like these opening

up not just among audiences in

india but worldwide audiences came from

countries that experienced

similar political upheavals and exchange

those stories with one another

imagine a whole political lesson be

broken down to students

through first-hand experiences of people

all around the world

can do discourse like this exist in the

pages for textbook

imagine how this approach through

stories would help

better in honing skills like

communication and critical thinking

civic engagement is a very important

topic but how we impart it to people

gets kind of boring students sit at

their desks

and learn definition after definition

but never learn

how this participation will affect and

change

every aspect of their lives

but imagine if these lessons were to be

imparted to students

by literally transporting them to a

historical event

that demonstrates these concepts that

completely engulfs them

immerses them we did exactly this with

virtual reality

this is a film called right to pray that

i worked on as an editor

it was the first ever vr documentary

that came out of india

and shows us a certain struggle for

rights and resources

the film puts you in the shoes of women

from shabarimala

who are fighting for the right to enter

places of worship

places that they have been barred from

because of patriarchal notions of purity

and tradition

to feel a part of that struggle to feel

like you’re encountering it

first hand can maximize empathy

we also made a virtual reality

experience called cast is not a rumor

which drops you in the center of dalit

protests that broke out

in gujarat once again

it encourages you to see the

perspectives of those

whose voices are otherwise unrepresented

in formal education

these stories give you the opportunity

to know yourself

by stepping outside your own mind and

seeing yourself in relation to the world

empathy is the driver for radical social

change

and that is going to be necessary for us

to transform our societies

visual storytelling mediums make ideas

durable

they act as a good segue to put into

context

information that might otherwise seem

remote and unrelatable to us at first

we just need to find ways to make

empathy more habitual in education

so we can help students answer the

question

so what why should i care

just like how humans are hardwired to

tell stories

we’re also hardwired to engage in play

you see games from the beginning

teach us how to pursue a goal and

different ways of approaching that goal

it provides us with tools and incentives

to either solve that mystery or win that

battle

or find that treasure similar behavior

can be observed

when you put a kid in a playground

let’s say that they’re climbing a jungle

gym for the very first time

and they figured out that they need to

climb all the way to the top

to be able to slide down

and once they have figured this out it’s

probable that they would do this again

and again but maybe this time

they would do something slightly

differently try another path

or another section of the jungle gym

they might fall

but they intuitively understand that

this failure is not

absolute because in play

there is no such thing as screwing up

it’s a safe and supportive environment

to try

test and tinker

i’m lucky to be in a professional

environment where every day feels like

what school should have felt like

i experiment with different mediums and

play around with my ideas

my current challenge is now

experimenting with how stories and games

can come together and act as a catalyst

for change

i’m building a story based game module

that could help tweens

teenagers and young adults build

critical thinking skills

when encountering fake news on the

internet

for some time now the internet has been

contaminated with misinformation and

disinformation

and we need to ask ourselves how often

do we question the source of our news

do we ask who is creating this

information we see on social media

or our whatsapp groups how often do we

end up passing along this information

without having critically analyzed it

the internet unlike school does not

adhere to a curriculum

of carefully crafted material

but if this was cool we would have all

failed that test

it’s nice to look at education and

entertainment in binaries

for one must support the other to

maximize engagement

and immersion but this also puts a lot

of responsibility on an entertainment

industry

that needs to see the value in their

stories in shaping

individual beliefs and societies

stories tend to promote harmful notions

of patriarchy

or violence or poor social conduct and

sexual conduct this just further cements

dysfunctional beliefs

that our society already struggles with

if we simply looked at entertainment

with the same length of responsibility

that we do to education

the quality of the content that we

create in demand as a country

would automatically improve

so today if i would like to leave you

with any singular thought

it would be that education and

entertainment are not two separate

entities

but two sides of the same coin modern

media

we have the responsibility as lifelong

learners

to demand better stories better ideas

and better values from both our

education

and entertainment systems in our country

thank you

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