[Edu-sig] Acadmic gender gap (was Thoughts)

[John M. Zelle]

I hate to belabor this thread, as it seems a bit off topic, still I really feel that I've learned a lot. I just have to make one last response. See below.


---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: "Kirby Urner" <urnerk at qwest.net>
Date:  Tue, 7 Dec 2004 14:17:18 -0800

>Arthur:
>> What that impact is, and whether is "good" or "bad", can only be a
>> polticized conclusion - as there are no objective criteria for what is
>> good and what is bad in this realm.
>> 
>> We are on our own.
>> 
>> Why is there such discomfort with that prospect?
>> 
>
>I can live with it.
>

I find this a dangerous attitude. You could just as easily say we agree that taking large amounts of LSD has effects on very young children. Whether that is "good" or "bad" can only be a politicized conclusion, as there is no objective criteria for what is good and bad.

I'm sorry, but I can't accept that. If good scientific research does indeed establish that early exposure to video games and other electronic media causes loss of creativity, aggression, poor socialization, lack of concentration and contributes to academic failure, and if it is shown to be linked to a mental disorder (ADHD), then I cannot accept that as "good" in any stretch of the imagination. I'm not saying that the research at this point is definitive, but it's damn scary. Please don't misinterpret;  I'm not saying that every kid who plays video games is headed for trouble, that's not the way complex causation works. But if it's even one in 10 or 1 in 50, that's a significant issue.

Drinking alchohol during pregnancy has been linked to similar symptoms for the child. We try to discourage that. On the other hand, many parents are fighting tooth and nail to get more computers into early education. Why not wait? They can learn anything they need to learn about computers when they're in Junior High or later. It worked for most of us.

>One aspect of today's video games that I think may be somewhat negative, is
>they just blow us away with their breakthrough sophistication.  Some kid
>sitting in front of a Pygame console, manual open, just doesn't feel this is
>the cockpit of the same airplane, or even the same species of vehicle.
>"Tongue tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I" ('Learning to Fly',
>Momentary Lapse of Reason, Pink Floyd).
>
>For example, over Thanksgiving, I spent a goodly amount of time watching
>over the shoulder of my friend Les as he deftly maneuvered his way through a
>totalitarian world run by weird creatures from another dimension, with some
>human big brother quisling doing the propaganda -- cold, Eastern European
>looking towns, humans queuing for trains that never arrive, shuffling, heads
>down, guards with electric truncheons, ready to beat you back if you try to
>cross one of their crowd control lines.
>
>The physics in this game has been finely tuned.  Les took me to an abandoned
>playground (no children, no sounds of fun).  He picked up a cinder block and
>put it on one end of a see-saw, climbed an adjacent porch, and jumped on the
>other end of the see-saw.  The cinder block flew up a little (it's heavy),
>and landed with a muffled thunk, kind of like the dead bodies do, elsewhere
>in this game.  You can pick up just about any free object and throw it,
>sometimes with the aim to kill (several at once if you're good).
>
>Of course this virtual world is not the creation of one lone wolf coder.
>This is Valve, one of the strongest coding shops in the world right now.
>
>http://www.valvesoftware.com/
>http://www.half-life2.com/
>
>I think the workaround is to remind students that what we're up to is making
>"cave paintings" -- simplified homomorphisms (not isomorphisms) with several
>dimensions removed, and yet with enough intact analogies, enough realism, to
>impart the skills, heuristics, and habits of mind, that will serve the cave
>dweller well in future, as dimensions are added back.  
>
>So learn your PyGame and SDL, and you'll be that much closer to your career
>objective.  And who knows, along the way you might code some decent and fun
>little open source freebies, like Frozen Bubble (a staple in Linux world).
>
>Kirby
>
>
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