Living Joyfully

Helping parents cultivate a thriving unschooling lifestyle in their family.

  • Start Here
  • Deschooling
  • Unschooling
  • Parenting
  • About
  • Contact
  • Podcast
    • Q&A Episodes
    • Ten Questions Episodes
    • Interviews I’ve done …
    • TUC Talks
  • Books
    • Book Clubs
  • Network
  • Summit
  • Questions?
  • Articles
    • Spanish Translations
  • Blog
You are here: Home / My Library of Articles and Talks / One Last Thing … “Video games make you wiser”

One Last Thing … “Video games make you wiser”

I was contacted one day by Marco Visscher, a writer with the European magazine Ode who had read my video game article in Life Learning Magazine. He said he was interested in interviewing me for their “One Last Thing” column which appears, not surprisingly, on the last page of each issue.

I agreed and we arranged a time for him to call to conduct the interview. He also arranged for a local photographer to call me and set up a photo shoot at my home. It was a whirlwind few days while I did the interview, gave him some feedback on his notes, and arranged and completed the photo shoot. But it was a fun experience!

He was interested in using the school angle, versus just talking about learning through video games, but I figured at least it was a way to start spreading the concept.

English is not his first language, but he did reasonably well. And I wish they had chosen one of the pictures with the kids. Oh well.

What is the educational value of Vice Craft, Deus X and other video games?
“All skills that schools are trying to teach children, my son encounters in the video games he’s playing. Reading, math, doing research, social interaction. It’s a great way of learning because children are gaining their knowledge participating in activities they enjoy, which is hardly the case in a classroom. Gaming helps children learn how to learn.”

… And how to fight.
“My experience is that children are perfectly capable of understanding that the violence in games is fantasy. When children are free to choose the games they play, they choose the level of violence they’re comfortable with. My son doesn’t like games with a lot of violence, so he chooses to play other games. But if he did, I wouldn’t worry too much, because I’m involved in his gaming—playing the games he plays so we can discuss them.”

Isn’t gaming anti-social?
“Gaming is not just sitting in a corner, staring at your device. Children sit down with others to play. In some games you choose how characters interact with each other, so you’ll learn how people respond to certain behaviour. And then there’s online gaming, through which children can learn how to communicate with others—and that’s exactly the same interaction they would get if it had been a face-to-face encounter.”

What do kids learn from video games that they don’t learn in school?
“You know, schools tend to make things easier and split everything up in tiny particles, thinking children will learn faster. But I believe it has lost all meaning to them because it no longer relates to the real world. In video games you see a whole new big and complex world being created, and many children enjoy being challenged in this way. Therefore, game designers are making their games more and more complex every time—it’s just what children want.”

So, should video games become part of a school’s curriculum?
“I wouldn’t go that far. I believe children learn quickly, happily and almost effortlessly when they are enjoying what they’re doing—but not everyone enjoys playing video games. Instead of limiting the playing time your children spend on video games, you could engage them more and support their interest. Just because children learn skills through video games doesn’t make them less relevant.”

Published in:
Ode magazine, April 2005

Take me back to the talks and articles

The Living Joyfully Network community

The Living Joyfully Network

The Living Joyfully Network is an online community for parents worldwide to explore unschooling with other like-minded parents who are also choosing to embrace lifelong learning and develop strong and connected relationships with their children. We invite you to join our candid and wide-ranging conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling!

Learn more about the Network here!

free intro to unschooling ebook

Click the book cover to get the book from your favourite online retailer, or click the link below to join my mailing list and download the book directly!

What is Unschooling? A book about living and learning without school.

Exploring Unschooling Podcast

click to listen to the archive of all Exploring Unschooling podcast episodes

Choosing to live and learn without school isn’t as intimidating as you might imagine!

The podcast archive is now home to more than 300 episodes, filled with unschooling goodness.

support the podcast on Patreon

Have you read my books?

Free-to-Learn-Cover Free-to-Live-Cover Life-Through-the-Lens-of-Unschooling-Cover Living-Joyfully-with-Unschooling-Box-Set-Cover The Unschooling Journey Libre d'Apprendre cover Libre para Aprender cover Szabadon Tanulni cover

Journey with us to a new way of seeing your child

icon-logo

Join Anne Ohman, Anna Brown, and I in our online Summit where we share the experiences, insights, and tools that we found most helpful on our unschooling journeys. We will walk with you from where you are now, to where you want to be.

Looking for something?

I've been exploring unschooling for many years now and there's a lot of content here! I've been working to tag things to help you more easily find information about the questions you're curious about right now. I'll continue to work on this.

Click a topic to explore:

college

dads

deschooling

food

grown unschoolers

learning

life

math

reading

relationships

relatives

technology

teens

work

Welcome to Living Joyfully

Pam ... an online resource for parents who are curious about unschooling. If you're passionate about exploring the world with your children, this site is for you. I'm Pam Laricchia, the author and owner of this site. Thanks for inviting me along on your unschooling journey!

The Living Joyfully Network

The Living Joyfully Network is an online community for parents worldwide to explore unschooling with other like-minded parents who are also choosing to embrace lifelong learning and develop strong and connected relationships with their children.

Learn more and join us here!

SEARCH LIVING JOYFULLY

Living Joyfully participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and the iTunes Affiliate Program. This allows me to earn a small commission, at no cost to you. I appreciate your support!

Read my Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy.

Copyright © 2023 · Living Joyfully Enterprises

By using this website, you agree to the use of cookies. I use cookies to provide you with a great experience and to help my website run effectively. OK READ MORE
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT