After trying various arcade games to find out how they could help develop academic-related skills, I feel like I need to look more closely at what Gee calls the "problem of content" (2003, pp. 20-21).

According to this view, knowledge that isn't related to any academic disciplines is meaningless. I think a form of this viewpoint has resulted in elitism, that is, in some people (especially academics) regarding practical knowledge as inferior to abstract one. I feel this problem is pervasive in France elites as well as in many people's way of arguing: in (too) simplistic terms, the French enjoy the argument for the sake of it while the American enjoy coming to an agreed conclusion.

Of course, the impact of this issue is much less relevant to vocational training than it is to academic ones. Likewise, it affects countries differently: for instance, in Finland's educational system, considered to be the World's best (BBC 2004), cooking and woodwork are compulsory and are given as much importance as other subjects because of their place in the country's culture.

The problem with the problem of content

The author then stresses out that any academic discipline is primarily a social practice, where content is situated in specific ways of thinking and practising. Taking content out of those practises renders it, in fact, meaningless.

So it may well be that the common criticisms against video games should instead be directed towards certain schools or teachers: the problem of content is in fact at the heart of my initial lack of interest in History and when I eventually faced a personally relevant situation to which History was the answer, I started to look at it in a different way.

Meaningless dates? It always depends on the context: whiteboard? Click to find out...

In my case, blaming teachers would be too simple and a lack of open-mindedness on my part was certainly equally responsible for that. Nonetheless, I believe school disciplines often fail to engage students in their social practices by making them feel that it is relevant to their personal lives.

Except environments designed without specific back-story such as Second Life, most successful video games do implement specific social practices where players learn some content, that is of more or less direct relevance to traditional schooling.

One of the possible answers could be virtual worlds such as Second Life or Google Earth, provided educationalists are able to plug relevant back-stories and aims into it to tailor it to their needs.

References:

BBC (2004). Finland tops global school table.
Retrieved: 13 February 2009. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/4073753.stm

Gee, J. P. (2003). Semiotic domains: is playing video games a "waste of time"? In What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York, Palgrave Macmillan.