“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein
Twenty seven years ago, the United States led the world in graduation rates. Today, roughly one out of five students fail to get a diploma in four years.
Of those receiving diplomas, few are receiving the skills to fill the needs of the workforce: sixty percent of the new jobs that will open in the 21st century will require skills possessed by only 20 percent of the current workforce, mainly in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.
Why is the United States education system apparently so far behind and not preparing its students for the rigors of the twenty first century workplace (it’s not for a lack of spending)?
The modern United States educational model was heavily derived from The Prussian Education System. Horace Mann, a Massachusetts Politician regarded as the “Father of Modern Education”, traveled to Germany in 1843 and returned to the United States promoting their system. The purpose of the Prussian Model in short was to instill loyalty to the King, train young men and women to be able workers for industrial labor and to serve in the bureaucracy.
German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte provides one of the most noted summaries of the Prussian Model:
If you want to influence the student…you must do more than merely talk to him; you must fashion him, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than what you wish him to will.
Mann took this belief one step further and believed that universal education was:
…The best way to turn the nation’s unruly children into disciplined, judicious republican citizens.
So over 150 years later, in a time where students can work remotely via webcams and do their homework without a quill or a piece of paper, the United States Education System is still deeply rooted in men who wanted to train citizens to obey the King, be Republicans and work well in factories.
Today, the average child in the modern era spends 75 hours per week digesting digital media, be it a movie, tv show, or surfing the web. The average Xbox user spends roughly 7.1 hours per week online.
Some prognosticators have pointed to video games being the PROBLEM with our society, but maybe it’s time we looked at them as an ANSWER? Maybe instead of trying to rip devices and games out of children’s hands, we use the fundamentals of games to reverse recent graduation trends and realize they are the NEW SCHOOL teaching children (and adults) how to learn.
Joey Lee and Jessica Hammer are two leading researchers in the benefits of placing video games in the classroom or “gamifying education.” They point out that video games provide multiple routes to success, allowing students to choose sub goals, while offering support to increase engagement. People enjoy video games because goals are well laid out and provide immediate benefit. It’s also okay to repeatedly FAIL in a video game — this is after all how you learn.
Public Schools are the exact opposite, you usually get one shot to answer a question correctly and even then you’re told what to do without any idea of what the larger benefit is for your work.
Professor and scholar James Paul Gee believes video games have the inherent ability to teach concepts and ideas beyond just memorizing facts:
The fact is, when kids play videogames they can experience a much more powerful form of learning than when they’re in the classroom. Learning isn’t about memorizing isolated facts. It’s about connecting and manipulating them.
Assistant Professor Dr. Kurt Squire has been one of the leading innovators in researching and developing models for using video games as a learning tool. His book Video Games and Learning explains the benefits of using video games as essential teaching tools. The “state of flow” of playing video game makes goals primary and makes your sub-conscious ostensibly “disappear”, almost allowing a gamer to forget that they are learning. Almost the exact OPPOSITE is true in schools, where students are at the mercy of their teachers.
So if there are already so many bright minds and so much empirical evidence supporting the immersion of video game technology into the classroom, why after almost two decades of research are we so far behind?
As Dr. Squire exclusively told us at The Jace Hall Show:
One of the big issues I think is that we’re at a real transition in terms of our education system. Games work best when they are used in a personalized, interest-driven context and as a springboard for deep inquiry. This requires individualized pacing and a non-standardized model where not everyone is doing the same thing at the same time.
The Prussian Educational model has evolved towards implementing newer policies, like No Child Left Behind. Essentially this only serves to administer “old school” educational models and require all public schools to give out state-wide standardized test annually to all students. Every student will take the same test under the same conditions, with the assumption that each student should be on a similar track.
This almost directly contrasts the Finnish school system, which is often believed to be the world’s best, where teachers write their own tests for students in their classrooms.
If the United States education model were a video game, it would consist of roughly a dozen levels, with loosely defined missions along the way that only gave you one chance to succeed. If you failed, you’d have a negative gamerscore that would be nearly impossible to make reputable.
If you succeeded, you’d have to wait until your teacher gave you permission to level up, and in all likelihood, you wouldn’t be able to assist your fellow gamers (or in this case classmates) with beating the level.
It’s apparent that if we look at education like its a video game, we can better understand the flaws of the system from the STUDENTS’ perspective and work to solve these issues. Knowing the history of our current education models, one has to wonder if we should even be surprised by graduation rates that are less than auspicious or a workforce with a lack of much needed skills.
The good news is that there are signs the system is evolving and video games are part of that evolution.
We will have more on that story and the implementation of video games in the classroom, next week.
Paul Nyhart – who has written 881 posts on The Jace Hall Show.
Paul Nyhart has been the Head Editor and Writer of JaceHallShow.com since Season 3. He began his career as a sports announcer, segueing into the world of voice-over and film production. Send all tips to Paul@HDfilms.com

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