I love the smart people over at TED.com. I could lose myself for days in the brilliant minds of the collective there. Immersed in the high quality videos, feeling new wrinkles growing in my brain until it hurts. I’ve “liked” their page over at Facebook so that I can be informed when they post new talks on video. This past week they posted “Ali Carr-Chellman: Gaming to re-engage boys in learning” which interested me for a few reasons. First, I have two sons who are extremely intelligent but were left behind all of their grade school and high school careers. Second, I write for kids, some of those kids being boys.
I’ve always maintained that there isn’t as big of difference between boys and girls as society tells us there is. Maybe this is me trying to simplify things, or maybe it’s the female in me screaming for equality for all. I believe that as a society we are just as bad to our boys as we are to our girls. Men may have the power, but society strips them of a lot of things still.
Ms. Carr-Chellman maintains that we are losing our boys from schools because we do not accept their culture. She does address my concerns about girls and gender bias, so I think I’m okay with that. The only thing I might add which would take away from her focus is that girls might also make better students because society teaches us to be submissive. Care-takers. Memorize your lines and move as directed. However, we want adventure, and games too. But this is about the boys and while I love to blur that line, I understand the need here for distinction.
Here is the TED video that I’m talking about:
I always put a limit on the video games my boys played. I kept them age appropriate. But