Let the children play Archives
The moncler outlet sale ABC’s 7.30 Report contacted Screen Play last moncler outlet store week for advice on an upcoming story exploring people’s fears discount moncler jackets that technology and video games are stealing our kids’ childhood.
It’s a concern that is certainly not new, but Screen Play had hoped the growing acceptance of games as learning tools within schools and the workplace, as well as their gradually improving cultural recognition, was starting moncler sale outlet to allay such fears.
I suppose we must be patient, as there are still many people who are keen to use games for political means, exploiting parents’ understandable concerns over a medium that is foreign to many of them. As Screen Play has remarked before, the generation gap can be relied upon to produce criticism based on the shock of the new.
In time, games will be widely accepted as having the capacity to equally aid a child’s development as to harm. Just like other popular targets from the past that have been condemned by baffled parents, politicians or lazy columnists (including comics, rock ‘n roll and television).
Screen Play spoke to parents at a Melbourne private school last year, and it was obvious that many attendees were extremely relieved that someone might uk moncler outlet actually confirm their suspicions that a lot of the games their children were playing were teaching them uk moncler sale valuable skills.
These parents had been made to feel guilty about letting their children play games by fear merchants, whose unfounded claims are too often aired as fact by lazy current best moncler jackets affairs programs and tabloid newspapers.
Screen Play is hopeful moncler online store the 7.30 Report does its moncler usa research, as it would not be difficult to find one of millions of Australian moncler outlet online homes where gaming is a normal, social and family friendly moncler outlet prices past time.
Indeed PS2 alone can now be found in 27 per cent of Australian homes, with games like EyeToy, Guitar Hero, Lego Star Wars, Buzz and SingStar cheap moncler jackets mens offering obvious examples of games able to be moncler outlet enjoyed by all family members. Nintendo’s wonderful DS has also done a stellar job recently of shattering stereotypes, particularly with its Nintendogs and Brain Training games.
We all want our children to enjoy a balanced range of activities. No one will argue that children shouldn’t read books, play sport and use toys to fully explore their wild imaginations.
No child should spend countless hours glued to a computer, television screen or handheld game, nor should they be allowed access to media designed for adults. But that’s just bad moncler sale online parenting, not technology robbing moncler sale kids of their innocence.
Society has finally stopped using media like monclerdownjacket television as a scapegoat for social ills, and it is time that electronic games got the same respect, even if the games industry sometimes does its best to encourage criticism.
We all know games can improve coordination, problem solving skills and moncler uk outlet fuel the imagination, allowing players to experience amazing digital playgrounds with endless possibilities. And we know gaming doesn’t have to be a solo activity: most people prefer to play with friends, whether sharing the couch with a mate outlet moncler or playing faraway friends over the ‘net. And anyone who has played online will attest that games can encourage communication, co operation and teamwork.
Many academics around the world are currently studying how games can be harnessed for education, realising that their capacity to let users learn via experimentation is supremely powerful.
The majority of commercial games released today might still be juvenile and vacuous, but this is a fledgling media with astonishing, uncharted possibilities for entertainment cheap moncler sale and education.
Let’s hope the message from next week’s program is that parents should protect their kids from inappropriate content, but that the best way to educate them is to join them on the sofa and explore together what this exciting new medium has to offer.
it angers me sometimes to know that the most prominent outspoken people against games are in very influential positions, and many of them have not even played a game.
there was a lot of controvesy on our local radio station about the rockstar game Bully when it first came out, and the most informed person in the station was saying how inappropriate it was to teach kids to bully other kids at school and they had only read the cheap moncler jackets back of the case!
nobody who spoke out against the game had actually even SEEN it being played, therefore making very influencing comments on a subject they were ignorant about, to other people who were equally ignorant of the topic and rely on the verdict of these “professionals” to form their own judgement. 150 years ago, the majority of children had virtually no education, and worked as soon as they were able. The inventions that have historically ‘stolen’ childhood have only arisen because there has been a period of childhood to exploit.
Although my case study of one isn’t persuasive evidence, I grew up with 8bit computers, had a Sega Megadrive, then a PC, and now moncler womens jackets a PS2 (and a Mac and PC). I still found time to be in bands and read a lot of books.
And from a cheap moncler coats mens cynical viewpoint, if you take away the kids’ Tekken and Soul Calibur etc, they’ll have to channel their anger in other directions.
This isn’t an answer but a theory.
How much have we relied on the “nature course of things” to aid a childs development. We let kids make mistakes and discoveries amongst the world they inhabit, and from cheap moncler jackets womens this process they learn. I am not touching on structured learning or ‘teaching’ in this case, as this blog is referring more to ‘how children play’.
However, we are shaping the world in which they are discovering experiences and mistakes. The flaw moncler outlet woodbury is that by trying to restrict access to experiences and mistakes made by us, this will in turn inhibit learning balanced reasoning and continue with the same mistakes.
My point about “destroying childhood with technology and video games” really bugged me because the political and social agenda is not actually looking at what is really destroying childhood.