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Teaching History In Schools With Video Games
Joe writes "There's a story about a Massachusetts company, Muzzy Lane Software, creating a Civ-style simulation computer game to teach history to high school and college students. 'Our view isn't that you take the right video game, stick it in a classroom and everything gets better,' Mr. McCool said. 'But with the right tools, this can significantly enhance learning.'"
When I was younger, I had a few of such games. The math ones were super fun, but the ones about history was seriously boring. It was just pictures with some added sound, and then a quiz to "test your knowledge". That wasn't fun.
I really miss playing Oregon Trail on the apple II we had in our classroom.
Douglas P. Price
Does anyone else remember playing "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?". I loved that game, and I think its probably one of the biggest reasons for my love of history and computers! I can see good high quality video games easily making people love History and Geography! As a side note there were tons of spin offs from the "Carmen Sandiego" series. There was a "Where in Time" and there was even a TV Show/Gameshow!
I learned (and still remember) more about history from all the historical fiction books I've read than I ever will from history classes. If they can keep the level of gamer involvement high, this makes great sense.
Imagine playing as Alexander the Great, Julius Cesar, Attilla the Hun, or any other historical figure trying to build an empire. That could be interesting.
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
I learned everything I need to know about Germans by playing Wolfenstein.
That's actually a good point. These 'games' are great at imparting the creator's bias. It's one of the things I love/hate about 'God Games' (think SimCity tax policy) but it unnerves me when people talk about their educational value.
One safeguard is, of course, open source. It won't get the bias out of the 'games', but at least you can identify it.
(And someone mod parent 'Funny'--the winking emoticon should have been a clue.)
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
I'm torn on whether or not this is a good thing. As a professional historian, my immediate response is against this sort of thing - it essentializes history and is likely to remove much of the complexity from history for the students. Games also tend to be quite anachronistic, project contemporary (modern?) views, beliefs and stereotypes back across periods and events preceding these views and beliefs. Video games rarely teach people to think critically and analytically about history.
On the other hand, I have to admit that Civilization (the original DOS game) had a lot to do with getting me fired up about history in high school. I now know (and was vaguely aware then) that the game was (and continues to be) *HORRIBLE* in terms of historical accuracy or methodology, but it *did* get me fired up about history and caused me to sign up for the advanced history classes, which led to me choosing history as a major in college. Had I not gotten so fired up about history when I was 16, perhaps I would not have pursued a PhD in it.
So I suppose I'm on the fence - games such as Civ and Age of Empires mislead people into some horribly skewed views of history, but since they do get people interested in becoming history students, we (professional historians) get a chance to "unlearn" the errors when they take our classes. With any luck, we can keep some of the excitement while doing so. Since college intro history spends much of its time undoing the damage of the (highly political) K-12 school-board-driven history classes anyway, it's not likely to hurt.
I did not design this game/I did not name the stakes/I just happen to like apples/And I am not afraid of snakes-AniD
History does have predictive value; at least, the real thing tends to. Take Napoleon and Hitler; had Hitler paid any attention to Napoleon's attempt to conquer Russia, he probably wouldn't have tried to do the same thing in the exact same fashion a second time around (with equally bad results) -- some people, such as myself, are quite happy that he screwed up so badly.
Stalin, on the other hand, did pay attention to history; he couldn't get rid of the Greek Orthodox Church (he wanted a totally atheistic state), so he just made them a part of the political structure (thank you, Henry VIII), and then by controlling the church, controlled all the people who wanted to listen to the Church over the State (Stalin).
All of our methods of any sort of prediction do, in fact, rely on history; even science does. The whole concept that the universe tends to behave the same way throughout space and time (homoegenity of space and time) is one of the cornerstones of physics.
The problem lies in revisionist history. Try to use that as a baseline for any sort of prediction, and you'll get garbage, because you put garbage into the front of the equation.
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
Thanks to Medal of Honor: Frontline, I can't watch a WWII documentary without getting chills. I vividly remember storming the beach on D-Day, and fighting house to house during Operation Market Garden. These events happend over 60 years ago, but to me the were just last year. I'm presently about the same age as those that were there. I know it's lame in a way, but thanks to MoH I now have an even grater level of respect for the veterans I know. Realistic and honest depictions of war may actually prove to be educational and valuable.