Children at St Columba’s School in Dundee have been taking part in a pilot scheme in which they start the day with 20 minutes of Nintendo.
The ten-week trial - run by the curriculum body, Learning and Teaching Scotland - allowed one class at the primary school to begin their school day with ‘brain-training’ games on hand-held consoles, then compared their performance to an ordinary class. LTS claims the players were better-behaved and more co-operative in class, and improved their maths scores.
“We need to look at the educational experience of learners who are coming from a digital age, who have a cultural value of technology, of games,” said Derek Robertson of LTS. “It's important that school reflects this as well."
“Cobblers,” said a professor of cognitive neuroscience.
The government is planning a wider trial, saying that anything which engages children’s minds and produces apparent results must be a good thing, and the advantage of a gaming console over old-fashioned methods – or ‘teaching’, as it used to be known – is that the console doesn’t go on strike, doesn’t have to be bribed into the profession and probably lasts longer than two years before breaking.
It confirmed that it is also studying the possibility of allowing kids to play FIFA ‘08 instead of sport and PE, enabling them to sell off all remaining school playing fields to Tesco. World of Warcraft will replace breaktimes - and when the children leave school, they can spend the rest of their lives shut in a darkened room playing Sims 2, which is much less traumatic than real life. Except of course when one of your Sims accidentally sets the kitchen on fire and dies.
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