Many "educational programs" are being developed by companies who are choosing to use entertainment features to capture kid's attention. What's wrong with that?
A New York Times article posted yesterday prompted me to revisit some of my thinking associated with earlier articles I have posted regarding the habits of mind kids need to be effective learners. The piece, titled, “A Bush Brother Spreads His Vision of Computerized Teaching Programs,” by Diana Jean Schemo, discusses the implementation of the Curriculum on Wheels (COW) Program, which is distributed by Ignite!Learning. The president of Ignite!Learning is Neil Bush, brother of President Bush.
According to Schemo’s piece, the COW program contains, “a year’s worth of social studies or science lessons done in short cartoons, songs, and occasional straight narration.” A teacher quoted in the piece states that “The kids are so into the video games, we have to entertain them, or we lose them.” Even more alarming to me is a quote by Neil Bush, “Textbooks honestly have failed middle school children. They rely on children’s ability to read, and they’re boring.” (Quotes from D. Schemo, NY Times, May 30, 2007)
Umm….yes, Mr. Bush, books DO rely on a child’s ability to read. And a child’s ability to focus on something for extended periods, manage frustration, exert themselves mentally, persist with something they find challenging or tedious, and delay gratification. These skills will also come in handy in high school, college, and, well, a WORK environment. The idea that we need to make education entertaining is alarming for several reasons, the main one being that part of the task of education is to prepare kids for a world where many of their responsibilities and tasks will be less than entertaining. Yet, we have jumped onto the bandwagon, buying into the claims of those who market “educational” products that this is the way to go. Yet most of these products have not been proven to have significant impact on student achievement. In my opinion, they just feed into the expectation that the responsibility for attention and effort lies somewhere outside of the student.
