Video Games Are the Future of Education
Hot takes from people with no experience in the field are only interesting to other people who have no experience in the field. It seems developers are particularly prone to this hubris. I don&#x27;t find many doctors writing about the future of programming languages, or teachers writing blogs about the future of medicine. Yet you can find thousands of these hot takes from developers about the future of education. Or pick your subject. Even worse you can find startups by these folks. Startups who are getting it wrong with people&#x27;s education.<p>I would have way more tolerance for these articles if they started with &quot;I have never studied education, I have not taught children, I haven&#x27;t done the homework or any reading on pedagogy, but I would like to do some thought experiments on hacking education...&quot;.<p>Brainstorming can be useful and bad ideas should be welcome during brainstorming. I understand why it is embraced on HN. But it has to be closer to the end of the spectrum of experts brainstorming than it is closer to the end of the spectrum of monkeys randomly typing a work of Shakespeare.<p>Imagine junior programmers brainstorming the future of cryptography. It&#x27;s just going to be cringe. Nothing significant is going to come out of it. Of course they should do it between themselves. And that&#x27;s where it should end.<p>As far as why video games are not the future of education, there are many things worth learning that are best learned by doing them, not by taking part in a simulation. Speaking and understanding a language, playing a musical instrument, painting, public speaking, tying knots, soldering electronics, using shop tools, and many more. All things I learned in public school and many of which I still use. My public school wasn&#x27;t amazing. I could point out many flaws. But the good teachers I had were pretty amazing. Take that human out of the picture and replace it with a video game and I would have learned far less.<p>If you want to know the things that could immediately be improved about public education and have a measurable positive outcome, talk to teachers and get ready for some pretty obvious answers that are generally going to require more money.<p>Does that mean video games don&#x27;t have any future in education? Of course not. But they are nothing near the silver bullet promised by the author.