Ali Carr-Chellman: Gaming to re-engage boys in learning

85,420 views ・ 2011-01-14

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:16
So I'm here to tell you that we have a problem with boys,
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and it's a serious problem with boys.
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Their culture isn't working in schools,
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and I'm going to share with you ways
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that we can think about overcoming that problem.
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First, I want to start by saying, this is a boy,
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and this is a girl,
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and this is probably stereotypically what you think of as a boy and a girl.
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If I essentialize gender for you today, then you can dismiss what I have to say.
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So I'm not going to do that, I'm not interested in doing that.
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This is a different kind of boy and a different kind of girl.
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So the point here is that not all boys exist within these rigid boundaries
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of what we think of as boys and girls,
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and not all girls exist within those rigid boundaries
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of what we think of as girls.
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But, in fact, most boys tend to be a certain way,
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and most girls tend to be a certain way.
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And the point is that, for boys,
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the way that they exist and the culture that they embrace
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isn't working well in schools now.
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How do we know that?
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The 100 girls project tells us some really nice statistics.
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For example, for every 100 girls that are suspended from school,
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there are 250 boys that are suspended from school.
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For every 100 girls who are expelled from school,
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there are 335 boys who are expelled from school.
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For every 100 girls in special education,
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there are 217 boys.
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For every 100 girls with a learning disability,
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there are 276 boys.
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For every 100 girls with an emotional disturbance diagnosed,
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we have 324 boys.
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And by the way, all of these numbers are significantly higher
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if you happen to be black,
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if you happen to be poor,
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if you happen to exist in an overcrowded school.
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And if you are a boy,
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you're four times as likely to be diagnosed with ADHD --
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Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
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Now there is another side to this.
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And it is important that we recognize that women still need help in school,
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that salaries are still significantly lower,
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even when controlled for job types,
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and that girls have continued to struggle in math and science for years.
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That's all true.
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Nothing about that prevents us
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from paying attention to the literacy needs
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of our boys between ages three and 13.
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And so we should.
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In fact, what we ought to do is take a page from their playbook,
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because the initiatives and programs that have been set in place
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for women in science and engineering and mathematics are fantastic.
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They've done a lot of good for girls in these situations,
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and we ought to be thinking about how we can make that happen for boys too
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in their younger years.
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Even in their older years,
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what we find is that there's still a problem.
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When we look at the universities,
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60 percent of baccalaureate degrees are going to women now,
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which is a significant shift.
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And in fact, university administrators are a little uncomfortable about the idea
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that we may be getting close to 70 percent female population in universities.
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This makes university administrators very nervous,
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because girls don't want to go to schools that don't have boys.
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And so we're starting to see
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the establishment of men centers and men studies
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to think about how do we engage men in their experiences in the university.
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If you talk to faculty, they may say, "Ugh. Yeah, well,
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they're playing video games,
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and they're gambling online all night long,
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and they're playing World of Warcraft,
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and that's affecting their academic achievement."
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Guess what?
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Video games are not the cause.
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Video games are a symptom.
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They were turned off a long time before they got here.
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So let's talk about why they got turned off
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when they were between the ages of three and 13.
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There are three reasons that I believe
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that boys are out of sync with the culture of schools today.
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The first is zero tolerance.
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A kindergarten teacher I know, her son donated all of his toys to her,
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and when he did, she had to go through and pull out all the little plastic guns.
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You can't have plastic knives and swords and axes
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and all that kind of thing in a kindergarten classroom.
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What is it that we're afraid that this young man is going to do with this gun?
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I mean, really.
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But here he stands as testament
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to the fact that you can't roughhouse on the playground today.
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Now I'm not advocating for bullies.
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I'm not suggesting that we need to be allowing guns and knives in the school.
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But when we say that an Eagle Scout in a high school classroom
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who has a locked parked car in the parking lot and a penknife in it,
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has to be suspended from school,
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I think we may have gone a little too far with zero tolerance.
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Another way that zero tolerance lives itself out
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is in the writing of boys.
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In a lot of classrooms today,
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you're not allowed to write about anything that's violent.
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You're not allowed to write about anything that has to do with video games.
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These topics are banned.
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Boy comes home from school, and he says,
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"I hate writing."
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"Why do you hate writing, son? What's wrong with writing?"
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"Now I have to write what she tells me to write."
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"OK, what is she telling you to write?"
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"Poems. I have to write poems.
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And little moments in my life.
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I don't want to write that stuff."
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"Well, what do you want to write?
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What do you want to write about?"
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"I want to write about video games. I want to write about leveling-up.
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I want to write about this really interesting world.
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I want to write about a tornado that comes into our house
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and blows all the windows out,
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and ruins all the furniture and kills everybody."
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"All right. OK."
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You tell a teacher that, and they'll ask you, in all seriousness,
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"Should we send this child to the psychologist?"
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And the answer is no, he's just a boy.
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He's just a little boy.
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It's not OK to write these kinds of things in classrooms today.
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So that's the first reason:
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Zero tolerance policies and the way they're lived out.
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The next reason that boys' cultures are out of sync with school cultures:
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there are fewer male teachers.
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Anybody who's over 15 doesn't know what this means,
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because in the last 10 years,
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the number of elementary school classroom teachers has been cut in half.
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We went from 14 percent to seven percent.
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That means that 93 percent of the teachers
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that our young men get in elementary classrooms are women.
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Now what's the problem with this?
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Women are great, yep, absolutely.
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But male role models for boys that say it's all right to be smart --
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they've got dads, they've got pastors, they've got Cub Scout leaders,
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but ultimately, six hours a day, five days a week
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they're spending in a classroom,
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and most of those classrooms are not places where men exist.
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And so they say, I guess this really isn't a place for boys.
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This is a place for girls.
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And I'm not very good at this,
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so I guess I'd better go play video games
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or get into sports, or something like that,
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because I obviously don't belong here.
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Men don't belong here, that's pretty obvious.
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So that may be a very direct way that we see it happen.
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But less directly, the lack of male presence in the culture --
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you've got a teachers' lounge, and they're having a conversation
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about Joey and Johnny who beat each other up on the playground.
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"What are we going to do with these boys?"
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The answer to that question changes
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depending on who's sitting around that table.
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Are there men around that table?
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Are there moms who've raised boys around that table?
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You'll see, the conversation changes
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depending upon who's sitting around the table.
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Third reason that boys are out of sync with school today:
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Kindergarten is the old second grade, folks.
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We have a serious compression of the curriculum happening out there.
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When you're three, you better be able to write your name legibly,
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or else we'll consider it a developmental delay.
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By the time you're in first grade,
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you should be able to read paragraphs of text
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with maybe a picture, maybe not, in a book of maybe 25 to 30 pages.
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If you don't,
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we're probably going to be putting you into a Title I special reading program.
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And if you ask Title I teachers, they'll tell you
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they've got about four or five boys for every girl that's in their program,
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in the elementary grades.
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The reason that this is a problem
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is because the message that boys are getting
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is, "You need to do what the teacher asks you to do all the time."
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The teacher's salary depends on "No Child Left Behind"
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and "Race to the Top" and accountability and testing
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and all of this.
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So she has to figure out a way to get all these boys
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through this curriculum -- and girls.
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This compressed curriculum is bad for all active kids.
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And what happens is,
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she says, "Please, sit down, be quiet, do what you're told,
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follow the rules, manage your time, focus, be a girl."
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That's what she tells them.
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Indirectly, that's what she tells them.
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And so this is a very serious problem.
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Where is it coming from? It's coming from us.
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(Laughter)
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We want our babies to read when they are six months old.
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Have you seen the ads?
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We want to live in Lake Wobegon where every child is above average ...
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but what this does to our children is really not healthy.
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It's not developmentally appropriate,
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and it's particularly bad for boys.
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So what do we do?
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We need to meet them where they are.
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We need to put ourselves into boy culture.
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We need to change the mindset of acceptance in boys
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in elementary schools.
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More specifically, we can do some very specific things.
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We can design better games.
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Most of the educational games that are out there today
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are really flashcards.
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They're glorified drill and practice.
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They don't have the depth, the rich narrative
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that really engaging video games have,
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that the boys are really interested in.
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So we need to design better games.
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We need to talk to teachers and parents and school board members and politicians.
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We need to make sure that people see that we need more men in the classroom.
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We need to look carefully at our zero tolerance policies.
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Do they make sense?
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We need to think about how to uncompress this curriculum if we can,
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trying to bring boys back into a space that is comfortable for them.
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All of those conversations need to be happening.
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There are some great examples out there of schools --
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the New York Times just talked about a school recently.
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A game designer from the New School
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put together a wonderful video gaming school.
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But it only treats a few kids, and so this isn't very scalable.
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We have to change the culture and the feelings
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that politicians and school board members and parents have
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about the way we accept and what we accept in our schools today.
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We need to find more money for game design.
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Because good games, really good games, cost money,
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and World of Warcraft has quite a budget.
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Most of the educational games do not.
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Where we started:
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my colleagues Mike Petner, Shawn Vashaw, myself,
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we started by trying to look at the teachers' attitudes
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and find out how do they really feel about gaming,
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what do they say about it.
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And we discovered that they talk about the kids in their school,
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who talk about gaming, in pretty demeaning ways.
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They say, "Oh, yeah. They're always talking about that stuff.
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They're talking about their little action figures
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and their little achievements or merit badges,
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or whatever it is that they get.
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And they're always talking about this stuff."
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And they say these things as if it's OK.
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But if it were your culture, think of how that might feel.
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It's very uncomfortable to be on the receiving end
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of that kind of language.
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They're nervous about anything that has anything to do with violence
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because of the zero tolerance policies.
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They are sure that parents and administrators
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will never accept anything.
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So we really need to think about looking at teacher attitudes
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and finding ways to change the attitudes,
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so that teachers are much more open and accepting of boy cultures
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in their classrooms.
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Because, ultimately, if we don't,
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then we're going to have boys who leave elementary school saying,
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"Well I guess that was just a place for girls, it wasn't for me.
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So I've got to do gaming, or I've got to do sports."
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If we change these things, if we pay attention to these things,
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and we reengage boys in their learning,
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they will leave the elementary schools saying, "I'm smart."
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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