Button mashing & critical thinking

This may be my most favoritest idea ever. Seriously, you're gonna hate it.

Or you won't care.

I know a lot of kids play video games. And I know a lot of kids struggle to learn how to think critically about things. I mean, we're pretty inclined as people to ask
why, but maybe not about certain things. Especially when it comes to things we read in newspapers, world wide web pages, and text books. Some folks are just conditioned not to think about it.

So we're going to use video games to think about things critically.

Take a video game like World of Warcraft. I'm an elf, killing dark elves or whatever they're called. Why? Well, they're part of the Horde and I'm part of the Alliance. Why? Because all elves are in the Alliance and dark elves (owtc) are in the Horde. It's broken down race lines.

Now we're getting into some heavy stuff. Race. War. Values. Now granted this world isn't real but if you can train your brain to think beyond just killing dark elves, you may start to ask more questions of the real world.

I think this could be an after-school elective. What if you got to play video games and then talk about them for credit. I bet you'd get some interest and buy-in, which always makes for a better class.

And WoW is just one example. Think of all the WWII games there are. And strategy games and role playing games. Even examining the whole Mario universe would lead to some rad questions and investigations of motives. Maybe Mario isn't such a hero after all!

Ok, he probably is a hero.

But Link is a nazi.