I'm trying to avoid constructing the school-time/video-game-time dichotomy because to do so would just mean I was a missionary for consumerism. Think about it: Why should I reinforce to my children, from an early age, that videos and such are fun and learning is not fun; consuming entertainment is what you want to do, and productive work is what you don't want to do, but rather have to do so you then can consume entertainment. That's just the type of people who the captains of industry hope I will introduce into the world: people who will obediently go work for them, only to turn around and consume their products.
Maybe I misunderstand, but surely Kodu is a fantastic advert for your ideas, and you should be welcoming it? Here's a fun thing to do that is learning and on a platform with which your kids' friends will be familiar.
I can understand that the balance between Halo 3 app types and Kodu app types is the wrong way around from your perspective, but the XBox does make it fairly cheap and simple to understand how the games are written and provides you with the chance to show your kids how the magic tricks are done, so to speak. I'd have thought that was a good thing :-)
Kudos on educating your kids on what you think is important though; I think it's great when people really think through education and put a lot of effort into it.
"Why should I reinforce to my children, from an early age, that videos and such are fun and learning is not fun; ..."
That's my question. By banning something with an iron fist, that is exactly the lesson you are teaching. You are putting video games into the same category as drain opener and power tools.
The lesson needed is that there is a time and place for everything, and that deliberate control and planning of activity is valuable. Self-control is learned by practice, not by having a helicopter parent prevent the opportunity to make the choice.
And anyway, planning and self-control are mainly driven by the maturation schedule of the brain. Before age 11 or so (in Caucasians), the frontal lobes simply are not active enough to accept much logic. After that age, the ability to plan and focus concentration develops almost automatically. (One school even did an experiment where math was not taught until that age. There did not appear to be significant bad effects.)
"These days, media is designed to be sticky and most media is driven by advertisements, ..."
You have confused cause with effect. Most content is appealing because people who make unappealing content go broke and stop making it. Survivor bias means that those who sing for their supper have a tendency to create content based on emotional appeal rather than abstract notions of value, and this is equally true for textbook authors, architects, and medieval bards.
Hey thanks for your comments. I though of the backlash that comes from denying something, as you say, with an iron fist. I intend to shape a culture in my home by addition of a bunch of activities which I feel will be beneficial, rather than simply subtracting video games and such.
As to me confusing cause with effect, I though of that too, and I think that the purveyors of media entertainment aren't simply providing what people want. Why do your crops die on Farmville if you don't log in for a few days? Is that what users want, for their crops to die?
