Bugs by a hair
In How Computer Games Help Children Learn, I wrote about the power of games to help children learn about the world, quoting Lev Vygotsky, one of the most famous developmental psychologists of the last century:
As Vygotsky explains, all games are ‘the realization in play form of tendencies that cannot be immediately gratified.’ In playing games, children are doing explicitly, openly, and socially what as adults they will do tacitly, privately, and personally. They are running simulations of worlds they want to learn about in order to understand the rules, roles, and consequences of those worlds. They are learning to think by examining alternatives in play.
I was reminded of Vygotsky this past Tuesday. My wife and I went to vote in the presidential primary and our kids came with us. We showed them the ballot, and talked about our choices. (My wife and I both voted for the same candidate. Our daughters split their allegiance.)
After we came home, the kids had a friend over, and as part of their play the three girls made their own primary election. We all voted–which involved giving our name to a poll worker, getting a ballot, going into a closet to mark it, and then placing the ballot into the collecting machine.
Then we had to leave the room and wait for the official tally of the vote.
The ballot looked something like this:
Republican
Cinderella
Snow WhiteDemocrat
Gabriella
NemoIndependent
Bugs Bunny
Scooby Doo
For those not up on elementary school cultural references, Gabriella is the ingenue in the latest Disney craze, High School Musical.
And for those curious about the outcome of the balloting, Bugs Bunny beat Gabriella 3 votes to 2. The exit polls showed that Gabriella and Bugs split the female vote, but Bugs held a commanding lead among voters 18 and over, and that pushed him over the top.
Bash-ophilia
The problems caused by playing video games. Now a pair of researchers want to give it a name: “videophilia.” The two researchers, Oliver R. W. Pergams and Patricia A. Zaradic, have been working on studies for the Nature Conservancy, that blame video games for the decline in attendance at the National Parks (originally available at: http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/02/05/nature.interest.ap/index.html?eref=rss_tech):
By studying visits to national and state parks and the issuance of hunting and fishing licenses the researchers documented declines of between 18 percent and 25 percent in various types of outdoor recreation.
The decline, found in both the United States and Japan, appears to have begun in the 1980s and 1990s, the period of rapid growth of video games, they said.
Sounds ominous. Until you read the fine print:
Taxing games to pay for time outdoors
So in the “here’s a lousy idea” category, check out this, from New Mexico (originally available at: (http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/ptech/02/01/game.tax.ap/index.html?eref=rss_tech):
A coalition of groups, led by the Rio Grande chapter of the Sierra Club, is sold on the idea that outdoor education programs can inspire children in a way that video games and television cannot.The coalition wants state lawmakers to create a No Child Left Inside Fund with a 1 percent tax on TVs, video games and video game equipment. The fund would help pay for outdoor education throughout the state.
Now OF COURSE outdoor education programs are a good idea, and we should do more to fund them. But taxing games and TVs to do it doesn’t make much sense.
First off, targeted taxes like this are just a bad idea in general. If you want to tax games as a matter of public policy that’s one thing. And if you want to fund outdoor education that is another. We could debate the merits of each, but as a matter of tax policy it doesn’t make much sense to link them. Is the point that if people play fewer games then we should defund outdoor education programs? I hope not, since outdoor programs are good for kids regardless of whether they play games or not.
Second, if it makes sense to tax games to pay for outdoor education because they keep kids from being outside, then surely we should tax books. And movies. And school. And pillows. And a whole host of other things that entice kids indoors.
The goal of funding outdoor education–and more generally getting kids to spend time outdoors and value wilderness–is a good one. But this is just a poor political stunt.
