Gaming to reengage boys in learning Ali CarrChellman
so I’m here to tell you that we have a
problem with boys and it’s a serious
problem with voice their culture isn’t
working in schools and I’m going to
share with you ways that we can think
about overcoming that problem first I
want to start by saying this is a boy
and this is a girl and this is probably
stereotypically what you think of as a
boy and a girl if I essential eyes
gender for you today then you can
dismiss what I have to say so I’m not
going to do that I’m not interested in
doing that this is a different kind of
boy and a different kind of girl right
so the point here is that not all boys
exists within these rigid boundaries of
what we think of as boys and girls and
not all girls exist within those rigid
boundaries of what we think of as girls
but in fact most boys tend to be a
certain way and most girls tend to be a
certain way and the point is that for
boys the way that they exist and the
culture that they embrace isn’t working
well in schools now how do we know that
the 100 girls project tells us some
really nice statistics for example for
every 100 girls that are suspended from
school there are 250 boys that are
suspended from school for every 100
girls who are expelled from school there
are three hundred and thirty-five boys
who are expelled from school for every
100 girls in special education there are
two hundred and seventeen boys for every
100 girls with a learning disability
there are two hundred and seventy-six
boys for every 100 girls with an
emotional disturbance diagnosed we have
324 boys and by the way all of these
numbers are significantly higher if you
happen to be black if you happen to be
poor if you happen to exist in an
overcrowded school alright and if you
are a boy you’re four times as likely to
be diagnosed with ADHD attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder now there is
another side to this and it is important
that we recognize that women still need
help in school that salaries are still
significantly lowere even when control
for the job types and that girls have
continued to struggle in math and
science for
years that’s all true nothing about that
prevents us from paying attention to the
literacy needs of our boys between ages
3 and 13 and so we should in fact what
we ought to do is take a page from their
playbook because the initiatives and
programs that have been set in place for
women in science and engineering and
mathematics are fantastic they’ve done a
lot of good for girls in these
situations and we ought to be thinking
about how we can make that happen for
boys to in their younger years even in
their older years what we find is that
there’s still a problem when we look at
the university sixty percent of
baccalaureate degrees are going to women
now which is a significant shift and in
fact university administrators are a
little uncomfortable about the idea that
we may be getting close to seventy
percent female population and
universities this makes university
administrators very nervous because
girls don’t want to go to schools that
don’t have boys and so we’re starting to
see the establishment of men centers and
men studies to think about how do we
engage men in their experiences in the
University if you talk to faculty they
may say oh yeah well they’re playing
video games and they’re gambling online
all night long and they’re playing World
of Warcraft and that’s affecting their
academic achievement right guess what
video games are not the cause video
games are a symptom they were turned off
a long time before they got here all
right so let’s talk about why they got
turned off when they were between the
ages of 3 and 13 there are three reasons
that I believe that boys are out of sync
with the culture of schools today the
first is zero tolerance right
kindergarten teacher I know her son
donated all of his toys to her and when
he did she had to go through and pull
out all the little plastic guns right
you can’t have plastic knives and swords
and axes and all that kind of thing in a
kindergarten classroom what is it that
we’re afraid that this young man is
going to do with this gun I mean really
you know but here he stands
a testament to the fact that you can’t
roughhouse on the playground today now
i’m not advocating for bullies i’m not
suggesting that we need to be you know
allowing guns and knives into school but
when we say that a Eagle Scout in a high
school classroom who has a locked parked
car in the parking lot and a pen knife
in it has to be suspended from school I
think we may have gone a little too far
with zero tolerance another way that
zero tolerance lives itself out is in
the writing of boys in a lot of
classrooms today you’re not allowed to
write about anything that’s violent
you’re not allowed to write about
anything that has to do with video games
these topics are banned boy comes home
from school and he says I hate writing
why do you hate writing son what’s wrong
with burning now I have to write what
she tells me to write okay well what is
she telling you to write poems I have to
write poems and little moments in my
life I don’t want to write that stuff
all right well what do you want to write
what do you want to write about I want
to write about video games I want to
write about leveling up I want to write
about this really interesting world I
want to write about a tornado that comes
into our house and blows all the windows
out and ruins all the furniture and
kills everybody right okay you tell a
teacher that and they’ll ask you in all
seriousness should we send this child to
the psychologist and the answer is no
he’s just a boy he’s just a little boy
all right it’s not okay to write these
kinds of things in classrooms today so
that’s the first reason zero tolerance
policies in the way they lived out the
next reason that boys cultures are out
of sync with school cultures there are
fewer male teachers anybody who’s over
15 doesn’t know what this means because
in the last 10 years the number of
elementary school classroom teachers has
been cut in half we went from fourteen
percent to seven percent that means that
93% of the teachers that are young men
get in elementary classrooms are women
all right now what’s the problem with
this right women are great yep
absolutely but male role models for boys
that say it’s alright to be smart
they’ve got dads they’ve got pastors
they’ve got Cub Scout leaders but
ultimately six hours a day five days a
week
our spending in a classroom and most of
those classrooms are not places where
men exist and so they say I guess this
really isn’t a place for boys this is a
place for girls and I’m not very good at
this so I guess I’d better you know
they’ll play video games so get into
sports or something like that because I
obviously don’t belong here men don’t
belong here that’s pretty obvious so
that may be a very direct way that we
see it happen but less directly the lack
of male presence in the culture you’ve
got a teacher’s lounge and they’re
having a conversation about Joey and
Johnny who beat each other up on the
playground what are we going to do with
these boys the answer to that question
changes depending on who’s sitting
around that table are there men around
that table are their mamas we’ve raised
boys around that table you’ll see that
the conversation changes depending upon
who is sitting around the table third
reason that boys are out of sync with
school today kindergarten is the old
second grade folks we have a serious
compression of the curriculum happening
out there when you’re 3 you better be
able to write your name legibly or else
we’ll consider the developmental delay
by the time you’re in first grade you
should be able to read paragraphs of
text with maybe a picture maybe not in a
book of maybe 25 to 30 pages if you
don’t we’re probably going to be putting
you into a title one special reading
program and if you asked how 21 teachers
they’ll tell you they’ve got about four
or five boys for every girl that’s in
their program in the elementary grades
the reason that this is a problem is
because the message that boys are
getting is you need to do what the
teacher asks you to do all the time all
right the teacher’s salary depends on No
Child Left Behind and race to the top
and accountability and testing and and
all of this so she has to figure out a
way to get all these boys through this
curriculum and girls this compressed
curriculum is bad for all active kids
and what happens is she says please sit
down be quiet do what you’re told follow
the rules manage your time focus be a
girl
so what she tells them indirectly that’s
what she tells them and so this is a
very serious problem where is it coming
from is coming from us right we want our
babies to read when they are six months
old have you seen the ad we want to live
in Lake Wobegon where every child is
above average right but what this does
to our children is really not healthy
it’s not developmentally appropriate and
it’s particularly bad for Boyd’s so what
do we do we need to meet them where they
are we need to put ourselves into boy
culture we need to change the mindset of
acceptance in boys in elementary schools
more specifically we can do some very
specific things we can design better
games most of the educational games that
are out there today our really flash
cards right there glorified drill and
practice they don’t have the depth the
rich narrative that really engaging
video games have that the boys are
really interested in so we need to
design better games we need to talk to
teachers and parents and school board
members and politicians we need to make
sure that people see that we need more
men in the classroom we need to look
carefully at our zero-tolerance policies
do they make sense we need to think
about how to uncompress this curriculum
if we can trying to bring boys back into
a space that is comfortable for them all
of those conversations need to be
happening there are some great examples
out there of schools that the New York
Times just talked about a school
recently is a game designer from the new
school put together a wonderful video
gaming school right but it only treats a
few kids and so this isn’t really very
scalable we have to change the culture
and the feelings that politicians and
school board members and parents have
about the way we accept and what we
accept in our schools today we need to
find more money for game design because
good games really good games cost money
in World War Craft has quite a budget
most of the educational games do not
where we started my colleagues Mike pet
nourish on Vashon myself we started by
trying to look at the teachers attitudes
and find out how do they really feel
about gaming what do they say about it
and we discovered that the
talk about the kids in their school who
talk about gaming in pretty demeaning
ways they say oh yeah they’re always
talking about that stuff they’re talking
about their little action figures and
their little achievements or merit
badges or whatever it is you know and
they’re always talking about this stuff
and they they say these things as if
it’s okay but if it were your culture
think of how that might feel it’s very
uncomfortable to be on the receiving end
of that kind of language they are
nervous about anything that has anything
to do with violence because of the
zero-tolerance policies they are sure
that parents and administrators will
never accept anything so we really need
to think about looking at teacher
attitudes and finding ways to change the
attitudes so that teachers are much more
open and an accepting of boy cultures in
their classrooms because ultimately if
we don’t then we’re going to have boys
who leave elementary school saying well
I guess that was really just a place for
girls it wasn’t for me you know so I’ve
got I’ve got to do gaming or I’ve got to
do sports if we change these things if
we pay attention to these things and we
re-engage boys in their learning they
will leave the elementary schools saying
I’m smart thank you