Gee writes that being literate means that one “can give and take meanings” (20). Well, I guess that I am completely illiterate when it comes to video games. I cannot give or take any meaning away. At all. I don’t speak the language or have the skills to play them. I’m not indifferent or apathetic – I really, really don’t like them. When I picked up this book earlier today, I had every intention of enjoying it. I was looking forward to the chance to view learning in completely different terms than I had ever considered it before. I was hoping to shed my old prejudices toward the gaming world and develop a new, more positive attitude. I’m forty pages in, and this has not happened yet. I really am interested in learning about learning, but when the ideas are presented within a semiotic domain in which I’m illiterate, it makes it very difficult for me to stay focused.
Where do these strong negative feelings come from, you may ask? Perhaps they stem from my childhood. My parents refused to buy a Nintendo on the premise that it would “rot your brain.” So, when I hung out with neighbors or friends, I had to sit and watch with equal parts boredom and jealousy while they saved the princess in Super Mario World without any seeming effort. I rarely took the control, because when I did I would inevitably fall off the cliff before reaching the end of the first stage. (Is it a stage? level? world? I don’t know.)
Over the years my aversion to video games has grown into something more than an embarrassed feeling of inadequacy. After reading Brave New World, I developed the theory that technology (video games in particular) has become some form of soma for people. I realize that admitting this makes me sound a little crazy, like an old person who’s afraid of all these modern changes. That’s ok. I admit to this because it helps set the stage for the whole point of my blog.
I love to read – always have. From a young age I found it entertaining and took pride in being ‘good’ at it. While my friends excelled at killing the dragon, I could ace every reading test. For me, the most important aspect of literature is that it exposes the reader to world-views and perspectives that may be very different than his or her own. As a teacher, I will teach my students critical reading skills and how to analyze a text, but my ultimate goal is to expose them to new ideas, causing them to hopefully think deeply and reconsider their own views. I have never taught teenagers or adults, but from all the discussion in class, I realize that I am going to have the huge challenge of trying to reach students who not only don’t love reading, but may actually hate it for one reason or another. Perhaps they struggled early on and never quite caught on to grammar and spelling rules, were embarrassingly less fluent than their classmates when it came to reading out loud, or were never able to give the ‘right’ answer on the reading test. I can relate. Falling off the cliff ten seconds into the game is really humiliating. If they can’t get past their aversion to the subject of language arts, how will they ever reach that ultimate goal of expanding their understanding of the world through literature? How do we get them past the first level if they’ve continually fallen off that cliff?
I really enjoyed reading your blog post. You definitely raise good questions! I can’t tell you how many parents have told me that they “hope this will be the year that Johnny learns to appreciate reading.” But, as you question, how do we break down the walls that have been built up for 15+ years? I don’t have any answers, but I’m always working to come up with new ways to “reach” my students.
I like the link you make between falling off virtual cliffs in videogames and falling off metaphorical cliffs when it comes to reading. Regardless of how we feel about videogames or even Gee’s arguments about videogames, there’s no denying that many children and teenagers do enjoy games, immensely. And for these kids, falling of virtual cliffs, repeatedly, is no obstacle to them trying again and again until they get it right. So even if we ditch every other point Gee makes about games, we’re still left with this fact: the same kids who don’t mind difficulty in videogames (who even scoff at difficulty) might be the same ones who shut down in the face of difficulty in school. And the question becomes, how do we harness that innate capacity to overcome difficulty (evident in gaming) and import it into activities like teaching reading or literature?