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Obama wants More Kids Making Games |
Listed in: News Tags: barack obama, education, kids, obama, programming, video games, violent games
With all this nonsense about violence in games floating around the middle of the gun control debate, it’s a bit weird to hear a politician singing high praise for the interactive medium. But Barack Obama, President of the United States, did just that during a recent Google+ discussion.
Obama noted that the idea of making video games inspires students to learn valuable skills that later translate into big innovations:
“You look at someone like Mark Zuckerberg [co-founder of Facebook], and he taught himself programming, primarily because he was interested in games."
"And there are a whole bunch of young people out there I suspect who, if in high school are given the opportunity to figure out 'here's how you can design your own games', but it requires you to know math, and it requires you to know science, or 'here's what a career in graphic design looks like' - we're going to start setting those programs in our high schools, not waiting to go to community college.”
He continued:
“What it does is not only to prepare young people who may choose to not go to a four-year college to be job-ready, but it also engages kids - they feel like 'I get this, this is not just me sitting there slouching in the back of the room while somebody's lecturing.”
Obama has expressed interest in changing the US education system, but his plate is pretty full at the moment. We’ll just have to wait and see if these thoughts manifest in any sort of policy agenda.
Thoughts?
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Comments
The problem is that there is NO proof this can or regularly does transfer to real world skills/school grades and with how much the US's worst performing schools pay their worst performing teachers I doubt putting money towards video game programming is the wisest way to spend tax dollars.
Also I'm really liking this presidential trend with Bush having said he liked playing Doom and he thought it was a parent's responsibility if they didn't want their kids playing such games and now Obama saying video games can be a positive educational tool, assuming he's being honest and not just forming a temporary plan of propaganda with Pelosi (big talk for hearts, little action later).
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