Critical Gaming Pedagogy

Critical Gaming PedagogyAuthor(s): Francesco CroccoReviewed work(s):Source: The Radical Teacher, No. 91 (Fall 2011), pp. 26-41Published by: University of Illinois PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/radicalteacher.91.0026 .Accessed: 10/02/2012 16:02

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RADICAL TEACHER • NUMBER 9126

Introduction

Meet Benjamin, an aspiring Game Designer. If he works hard to

accumulate the required skills in the game design industry, his career path will move steadily and predictably from Beta Tester to Hacker and finally to Game Designer. If he is not satisfied with that achieve-ment, Benjamin can keep working and move up to Venture Capitalist, open-ing his own company, or ultimately to Information Overlord, entirely monopo-lizing the regional media. No glass ceiling will bar his ascent; no workload increases will tax his resolve; no layoffs will frustrate the steady pace of his advance. Regardless of age, race, class, or gender, with a little hard work and ingenuity, Benjamin can achieve any career he wants.

If this career vector seems too good to be true, it is because it is not true. Benjamin is a simulated character—a

sim—inhabiting the virtual space of the popular video game The Sims. McKenzie Wark, author of the book Gamer Theory, created Benjamin as an example of how games are not so much simulations of reality, but ideal models that embody hegemonic ideology (20-22). In this case, Benjamin’s easy prosperity reveals how the algorithm governing economic life in The Sims is based on an “American Dream” in which an ideal combination of meritocracy, full employment, equal opportunity, and upward mobility is per-ceived to be the norm. Wark purposely contrasts his virtual Benjamin, who lives in this free-market ideal of capitalism, to the real Benjamin, a game designer strug-gling to survive in today’s harsh economic landscape. After losing his job at a small game-design firm that went belly-up, the real Benjamin moved to a larger firm—Electronic Arts, owners of The Sims. In

Critical Gaming PedagogyBy Francesco Crocco

NUMBER 91 • RADICAL TEACHER 27

an online forum, Benjamin’s wife exposed how her husband was required to work twelve-hour shifts, seven days a week without increases in pay or promotion (43-44). The contrast between “simula-tion” and reality is striking. Whereas the simulated Benjamin steadily rises up the social ladder, the real Benjamin struggles to break even in an economy where hard work is rewarded with longer hours and shrinking wages.

The example of The Sims demonstrates that games, like other cultural artifacts, reify hegemonic assumptions about the world, especially in the deep structure of their rules and mechanics. In this essay, I will argue that this feature allows games to be used either as a technology of social critique or social reproduction. I will show how the emerging field of games-and-learning studies threatens to do the latter by pitching game-based learning as a solution to the crises plaguing the U.S. economy. Scholars in the field make the case that traditional schooling no longer meets the labor needs of a post-industrial capitalist economy, but game-based learn-ing can. However, if the goal of game-based learning is to train better workers, then games will likely continue the func-tion of social reproduction that scholars have linked to traditional schooling, with the result that the educational system will further amplify social inequalities. I will articulate an alternative gaming praxis that intersects game-based learning with critical pedagogy to promote critical thinking rather than job training. I call this new pedagogical style “critical gam-ing pedagogy” and will discuss one class-room application using a modified version of the popular board game Monopoly to raise consciousness about how class inequality affects social mobility.

Gaming-to-WorkHas it ever occurred to you that a game

might actually be playing the player? For instance, to attract new recruits the U.S. Army now runs an online first-person shooter called America’s Army and operates an arcade-style recruitment center in a major urban mall featuring sophisticated combat simulators in which players tackle global terrorism.1 While the gamer is immersed in the thrill of play, the game is busy imparting basic military training and the ideology of benevolent imperial-ism. The successful player thus masters the game, but not before adopting its intrinsic values, attitudes, and beliefs.

Games have an uncanny ability to deliv-er content by producing high levels of engagement. K-16 educators have capital-ized on this feature by using “edutain-ment” games—games commercially marketed for educational purposes—to teach everything from English to engi-neering.2 Recently, however, proponents of game-based learning have criticized the edutainment industry for being little more than graphic-enhanced extensions of ineffective traditional skills-and-drills pedagogies and standardized testing regimes. Their alternative is to imitate the properties of popular video games. Far from being a source of moral corrup-tion as media pundits suggest,3 propo-nents of game-based learning argue that popular video games embody valuable learning principles that can revolution-ize the way we teach.4 For instance, the rich interactivity offered by games naturally reroutes learning away from the traditional “banking model” of education that reduces students to passive recipi-ents of institutionalized, rote knowledge, which is itself preparation for docility and servitude in a top-down workforce.


Additionally, popular video games are problem-solving adventures that foster engagement, inquiry, and critical think-ing. And the low-stakes “failing forward” design of most games allows students to learn from their mistakes and grow. Put simply, games are hard, just like educa-tion. But the difference is that popular video games are engaging, whereas edu-cation usually is not.

Unfortunately, proponents of game-based learning uncritically propagate what I call a “gaming-to-work” rhetoric to pro-mote their agenda. As the argument goes, traditional schooling and its edutainment equivalent have failed to produce work-ers who can compete in today’s high-tech global economy, but game-based learning can deliver this need. A prime example of gaming-to-work rhetoric can be found in the introduction to David W. Shaffer’s How Computer Games Help Children Learn.5 The book begins by recit-ing the findings of a 2007 report by the National Academies of Science and Engineering (in conjunction with the Institute of Medicine), which suggests that the steady economic decline in the United States since the 1970s is due to a failure in math and science education that has left the nation unable to compete in the global economy.6 Shaffer takes the report’s conclusion as a mandate to revolutionize a failing education system by switching to digital game-based learn-ing. He argues that traditional schooling is “not preparing children to be innova-tors at the highest technical levels that will pay off most in a high-tech, global economy” (3), and that games should be used to better “educate children for life in a high-tech, global, digital, postindustrial world” (15).

Other scholars have relied on simi-

lar gaming-to-work rhetoric to promote game-based learning. Henry Jenkins and Kurt Squire corroborate the claim that technical skills are the solution to current economic woes by document-ing five experiments in which games prove their ability to “enhance science and engineering education for K-16 stu-dents” (“Harnessing the Power of Games in Education” 5). In “Game Theory,” Jenkins compares the current economic crisis to the political crisis of the Cold War, arguing that just like television technologies helped the United States to win the space race by promoting math and science education, so too can video-game-based learning help improve the U.S. economy.7 Squire argues that game-based learning, as opposed to the “fac-tory model” of standardization, better simulates “how workers are asked to learn in the new economy” (“Changing the Game” 5). Similarly, James Paul Gee, the acknowledged guru of game-based learning, writes, “The theory of learning in good video games fits better with the modern, high-tech, global world today’s children and teenagers live in than do the theories (and practices) of learning that they sometimes see in school” (What Video Games Have to Teach Us 5). Marc Prensky, who has published extensively on game-based learning, has taken the next step and manages a “games-to-train” business.8

The problem with gaming-to-work rhetoric is that it blames the educational system rather than the political-economic system for the very real economic problems afflicting the United States. This error is corroborated by trendy mainstream sources like Time Magazine whose exposé on the future of work forecasts a “more flexible, more freelance, more collabora-tive and far less secure work world,” and


concludes that high-tech skills will best prepare U.S. workers for tomorrow’s top jobs.9 This may be the case. However, if current employment trends in the United States tell us anything, the future of work for the majority of Americans will consist mainly of low-waged, low-skilled jobs and chronic unemployment rather than high-powered professional careers in emerging industries.10 In short, the critique of eco-nomic crisis implicit in gaming-to-work rhetoric overplays the role of education and technical training while minimiz-ing or ignoring the role of neoliberal economic policies that have outsourced jobs, destroyed local industries, busted unions, raised unemployment, depressed wages, privatized resources, bankrupted state budgets, and generally redistributed wealth from the bottom to the top. The truth is that anti-labor policies, more than educational shortfalls or technologi-cal advances, are responsible for the grim future of work.

Furthermore, if the purpose of game-based learning is to produce better work-ers for the new economy, then it will merely retool education without chal-lenging its embedded mission of social reproduction. Educational scholars have identified a strong historical “correspon-dence between school structure and job structure” in the United States, and this correspondence has ensured that social inequalities are reproduced from one gen-eration to the next.11 For instance, the “factory model” of traditional school-ing that emerged in the latter half of the nineteenth century was calibrated to produce docile workers for industrial factories by enforcing routine discipline, repetition, rote learning, and external standards-based assessment.12 The dein-dustrialization of the U.S. economy since

1970 has necessitated a new educational structure, and proponents of game-based learning have promised to deliver. If so, game-based learning will likely inherit the work of traditional schooling, albeit with an updated pedagogy and cutting-edge technology. It will produce a more highly trained workforce without address-ing the growing inequality and instability of the global capitalist economy in which this workforce must operate. The result is that education will continue to serve capi-talism instead of critical thinking.

A Theory and Praxis of Critical Gaming Pedagogy

Paulo Freire has argued that all educa-tional practices are “political and never neutral” (Pedagogy of Freedom 67). By promising to use popular video games to train a new generation of workers for post-industrial capitalism, proponents of game-based learning challenge the meth-ods but not the politics of traditional schooling. These politics are not an essen-tial feature of game-based learning. Nor must game-based learning be limited to popular video games, a practice that runs the risk of catering to special interests in the gaming industry. When the valuable learning principles embodied by games (digital or otherwise) are used to promote critical thinking about hegemonic ideas and institutions rather than to propagate them, I call this critical gaming pedagogy.

There are two ways to practice criti-cal gaming pedagogy—simulation and codification. The first method is to utilize “serious games,” games specially designed for a primary purpose other than enter-tainment. One applicable serious games genre seeks to simulate the point of view of subaltern or marginalized subjects


in order to generate empathy that pro-vokes critical thinking about hegemonic notions. This new experience creates cog-nitive dissonance that must be resolved through the formation of a new episteme. For example, the video game 3rd World Farmer simulates the experience of a farmer in a developing country in order to raise awareness about how third-world poverty is directly related to decisions made in the first world.13

The second method is to adopt Freire’s technique of “codification.” Freire defines codification as the exploration of a theme through its representation or “codifica-tion” in media (Pedagogy of the Oppressed 121). One begins with the preparato-ry discussion of a theme, followed by the examination of a media sample that codifies that theme, and concluded by a dialog where students critically ana-lyze the theme and contingent media. In one example, Freire’s students perform a cross-examination of newspaper articles reporting on an important event. The goal is “to develop a sense of criticism, so that people will react to newspapers or news broadcasts not as passive objects of the ‘communiqués’ directed at them, but rather as consciousnesses seeking to be free” (122-3).

When a game is used as the medium for codification, it is treated not as a simula-tion of the real world, but as an artifact to be critically examined for the ways that it reifies hegemonic ideology. The point is to resist empathy and passive identification with game content and point of view so that the player can maintain a critical per-spective. Codification is the pedagogical equivalent of what the Russian Formalist Viktor Shklovsky called the “defamil-iarization effect” (“priem ostrannenija”) and the German playwright Bertolt

Brecht called the “alienation effect” or “A-effect.”14 Brecht writes, “A representa-tion that alienates is one which allows us to recognize its subject but at the same time makes it seem unfamiliar.”15 In theatre, Brecht’s A-effect contradicts the Aristotelian pursuit of empathy so that audience members remain critical observers instead of becoming passive supporters. Popular video games do the opposite: they welcome total identifi-cation between the player and his/her avatar in the game. This situation gener-ates the most fun, but it also allows the game to more thoroughly distribute the ideological payload reified in its content and mechanics. Conversely, when a game is used as codification material, the new context generates an A-effect that enables students to question its reified ideology and critically reexamine their conscious or unconscious adherence to this ideology.

Wark models the technique of codifica-tion by using The Sims to codify the theme of social mobility and then juxtaposing the virtual and real Benjamins to foster skepticism about the ideological assump-tions embedded in the game. Similarly, one might codify the “American Dream” by having students play the popular board game Life to demonstrate how it prescribes middle-class values that revolve around heteronormativity, careerism, consumer-ism, automobile culture, and suburban home ownership. Once isolated, students can then discuss these ideas as problems rather than as normative prescriptions.

Let’s Play Monopoly!I have used the popular board game

Monopoly since fall 2007 to punctuate a unit on social class in my basic writing course. My institution is an urban com-munity college with a largely African-


American, Hispanic, and immigrant working-class student population. Most of these students have experienced eco-nomic hardship and believe that an edu-cation will enable them to achieve the “American Dream” of upward social mobility. “Start here, go anywhere” is the college’s catchy slogan, and many students—especially those in remedia-tion—desperately internalize this belief.

I use Monopoly in a way that blends simulation and codification. I codify the theme of social mobility under capitalism using a modified version of Monopoly (my Monopoly “mod”) in which teams of stu-dents simulate the effects of class inequal-ity by playing characters who begin the game with different amounts of money, land, and privilege, and compete to win using the game’s normal mechanics.16 This modification invariably leads to a steady increase of initial inequalities during the game. My hypothesis is that as students come to identify with their disenfran-chised characters, they will become alien-ated from the game’s competitive econom-ics and false promise of upward mobility. On the other hand, the students who play privileged characters will acknowledge that their success is more a function of initial inequality than of fitness. In both cases, my goal is to provoke students to critically re-examine their ideas about class mobility under capitalism.

Monopoly has a rich pedagogical history dating back to 1903 when Lizzie Magie, a Quaker and progressive reformer, invent-ed the game to teach how unfettered land-lordism enriched property owners and impoverished tenants over time.17 Magie called her game The Landlord’s Game. Despite its commercial failure, home-grown versions of the game appeared at the Wharton School of Business (UPenn),

Columbia, MIT, Princeton, and Smith College to teach economics. In 1933, Charles Darrow reworked the game by discarding its original politics and adding an Atlantic City theme. He patented his version under the name Monopoly. The game sold so well that Parker Brothers eventually bought it, after which it went on to become one of the best-selling board games in history.

For those unfamiliar with the game, the modern version of Monopoly is a competi-tive game in which each player is a virtual landlord who must buy more and more land and properties in order to bankrupt the other players or else be bankrupted her/himself. The game’s mechanics reify the social-Darwinist ideology of laissez-faire market capitalism, pitting each play-er in a ruthless competition for land and money. Because players normally begin with equal wealth, the game reinforces the myth that capitalism is a classless society or “level playing field” in which all players have an equal opportunity to succeed. Upward mobility is available to those who make wise choices, while fail-ure is attributed to poor decision-making.

I segue into Monopoly via an essay on social class by Gregory Mantsios entitled “Class in America: Myths and Realities.” The essay is useful because it offers statis-tical data and case studies that highlight and challenge prevailing myths about U.S. society: 1) that the United States is a classless society; 2) that everyone is middle-class; 3) that we are all getting richer; and 4) that we all have an equal opportunity to succeed.18 Discussion of this piece provokes students to critically re-examine assumptions about meritocra-cy, social mobility, and equal opportunity that are grouped under the rubric of the “American Dream.” It also prepares stu-


dents to challenge the ideology embed-ded in Monopoly. Admittedly, similar essays can serve the same preparatory purpose, but this essay is especially ger-mane because of a key quote that likens the effects of inheritance to “a series of Monopoly games in which the winner of the first game refuses to relinquish his or her cash and commercial property for the second game” (343).19 This statement provides a perfect transition point to my Monopoly mod, which is designed to show how starting inequalities (like inheri-tance) lead to predictable outcomes.

In order to play Monopoly with 20+ stu-dents, I randomly distribute the students into four teams and assign each team a different character to play with different amounts of starting money, land, and privilege to simulate class inequality. To give the characters some depth, I draw them from class texts and provide brief biographies. I take three directly from the “American Profiles” included in the Mantsios essay. I take the fourth charac-ter from the documentary Made in L.A. (2007), a film about the struggle of textile workers in the L.A. garment district that we watch earlier in the semester. I emphasize to the class that the charac-ters’ starting resources reflect Mantsios’ statistics about the actual distribution of wealth in the United States by class, race, and gender.20 Consequently, the greatest wealth disparity is between the upper and middle-class characters, and the poor-est characters are women of color. The characters and resource allocations are as follows:

1. Harold, White Male Capitalist: $4000 + Boardwalk, Park Place, & 4 Railroads2. Bob, White Male Middle-Class

Worker: $1500 + New York Ave (his “home”)3. Cheryl, Black Female Lower-Class Worker: $10004. Maria, Hispanic Female Immigrant Worker: $500

To simulate class privilege, I also have each team role a six-sided “fortune die” for their character each time s/he passes “Go.” The chance of good fortune varies by class:

1. Capitalist: 1 bad, 2 nothing, 4-6 good2. Middle-Class Worker: 1-2 bad, 3-4 nothing, 5-6 good3. Lower-Class Worker: 1-3 bad, 4 nothing, 5-6 good4. Immigrant Worker: 1-4 bad, 5 noth-ing, 6 good

Events are calculated in terms of mon-etary rewards or fines ranging from $100-$300 depending on the round. Good events include capital gains, tax cuts, sub-sidies, welfare payments, awards, raises, promotions, and lottery winnings. Bad events include capital losses, unemploy-ment, rent hikes, tuition hikes, tax hikes, legal fees, and medical expenses. No private transactions are allowed and I end the game after each player has completed three turns around the board.

The game is played in a 100-minute period, with time for discussion before and after the game. I assemble the board on my desk and the students take turns rolling dice, moving pieces, and mak-ing decisions to buy or sell land. I play the banker and use this as an opportu-nity to teach how the relative power of finance over other sectors of the economy


(like real-estate) is analogous to the way traditional schooling centers power and knowledge in the teacher.

Results After running the game with eight class-

es over four semesters, I find a remarkable degree of uniformity in the results. Actual game-play averages 60 minutes before a clear winner emerges, leaving another 40 minutes for pre and post-game discus-sions. These discussions are prompted and recorded using a questionnaire. After the rules have been explained, but before we start the game, I ask students: 1) How do you think the game will end for your character? When the game is finished, I ask students two more questions: 2) How did unequal starting positions (due to inherited wealth, land, and privilege) affect the outcome of the game? and 3) How can opportunity be made equal? The following data is culled from question-naires and observations drawn from two sections of basic writing.

In response to the pre-game question, How do you think the game will end for your character?, the results show that 100% of respondents playing Harold believe they will win, 50% of respondents playing Bob think they will improve his social class and possibly win, 86% of respondents playing Cheryl believe they will improve her social class and possibly win, and 0% of respondents playing Maria believe they will improve her social class. 50% of respondents playing Maria believe they will sink further into poverty.

Of the respondents who played Harold, many noted that his victory was assured thanks to his superior starting condition. One such respondent noted that Harold would win because he was “brought up

in a rich family and good education.” Another was certain Harold “will make better financial decisions” than the others. Yet another glibly stated, “Start off rich, end up rich.”

The respondents who were optimis-tic about Bob’s performance gave differ-ing rationales. One cited that Bob “has shown in the past that he is ambitious.” Many respondents cited Bob’s strong middle-class education as the reason for his success. One respondent proclaimed, “Winning is based on being smart.” Several other respondents agreed that Bob had the potential to win because of his starting capital and education, but cited luck as the deciding factor that would ultimately propel Bob to victory.

The group playing Cheryl exhibited a remarkable degree of optimism about her chances. They based this optimism on an extrapolation from the supplied biogra-phy, from which they derived a strong work ethic that focused on how “hard-working” Cheryl was, on the fact that she was improving herself by “going to school for a higher education,” and on her admirable ambition to “get out of a high crime ghetto neighborhood.” Clearly, these respondents believed that, despite her economic disadvantages, a combina-tion of hard work, high educational goals, and ambition would ensure Cheryl’s suc-cess in a system that they believed was fundamentally meritocratic.

Of the respondents playing Maria, the outlook was uniformly grim. The reason given over and over again was that Maria’s lack of wealth and education left her with “no chance.”

These responses show how the students internalize their character profiles, often blurring the line between the fantasy world of role-play and the real world in


which they, not their characters, are mak-ing the financial decisions that will decide the outcome of the game. This effect might be the result of identification with one’s avatar in the game, a phenomenon observed by sociologists of gaming cul-ture.21 A more likely explanation is that the character profiles serve as conve-nient handles for talking about the real inequalities in starting positions faced by the players. References to education, tal-ent, work ethic, or ambition thus become indirect ways of acknowledging these inequalities.

During the three rounds of game play, I noticed that similar patterns emerged each time I ran the game. Most students playing Harold were ostentatious with their wealth and collected rents with cool tenacity. If playing Harold, the shy-est students frequently became animated and boastful competitors. The students playing Bob imitated their social betters and disdained the company of Cheryl and Maria. Conversely, Cheryl and Maria shared a natural class affinity and often appealed to Bob for solidarity. If Harold scored a heavy rental blow on Cheryl and Maria, they demanded charity on the basis of his excessive wealth; usu-ally, Harold denied it. When Cheryl and Maria landed in “Jail,” students preferred to linger there by rolling for three rounds (or until doubles were scored) instead of paying $50 to leave immediately. The most common reason given was that stay-ing in “Jail” was safer than navigating the financial perils of the board. Many of the students playing Cheryl and Maria joked about committing crimes to get ahead. In the end, characters were almost always bankrupted in the order reflecting their starting economic positions, with Harold winning the game in a position much

richer than he began. After the game, the students answered

the two post-game questions and dis-cussed their experience. In response to the question, How did unequal starting positions (due to inherited wealth, land, and privilege) affect the outcome of the game?, 87% of respondents agreed that class standing at the start of the game significantly affect-ed the outcome of the game. 100% of respondents playing Harold believed that inheritance played a significant role in their success. In conversation, most of the students who played Harold were contrite about their success. Conversely, one com-mented that Harold’s advantage “was fair because his ancestors established some wealth prior to his inheritance.” Another commented, “Even though it wasn’t fair, it was reality.” Notably, one respondent who played Bob commented, “My character ended up more or less the way it started at the middle class, which comes to show how hard it is to climb up the ladder.”

I intentionally blurred the line between game and reality in the last question, How can opportunity be made equal?, so that students would make the leap from the game world to the real world. Of the respondents, 42% said everyone should have the same wealth and privilege, 23% offered social reforms short of complete economic equality, 16% specifically cited better education, 13% believed nothing could be done, and 6% said the solution lay in individual choices. Of those in favor of total equality, one observed that society would have to “become communist” in order to be just. Those favoring a reform-based approach offered several solutions, including a class-based affirmative action plan, the creation of a “fund or easy loans for home ownership” in conjunction with cheaper mortgages, progressive taxation


“to help the less fortunate ones,” rent con-trol, unionization, “uniting as a commu-nity,” and political demonstrations where people “come together and protest.” A sig-nificant number of students believed that opportunity could be made equal if there were “better education for everyone.” Of those who believed nothing could be done to make opportunity equal, one person commented, “Not everyone starts off the same, so opportunity can’t be made equal,” and another wrote, “There will always be rich people and poor people, so it’s never going to be equal.” Finally, a minority of students was against reforms of any kind. One commented that opportunity could be made equal only if “Harold shares some of the wealth,” while another stol-idly endorsed “working hard and making smart investments.”

ConclusionMy goal was to use Monopoly as a codifi-

cation medium for examining hegemonic ideas about social mobility under capital-ism (i.e. that there is a level playing field with equal opportunity, that success is based on merit, and that merit is rewarded with upward social mobility). Responses to the pre-game question demonstrate that students entered the game with these ideas. My hypothesis was that playing a modified version of the game that simu-lated class inequality would lead students to challenge these ideas, and the data confirms this hypothesis.

The addition of character profiles and unequal starting positions added a simu-lation element that fostered player-char-acter identification, and this in turn gen-erated varying degrees of alienation from the game, which enabled students to criti-cally re-examine the game’s embedded ideology and their own adherence to this

ideology. Those playing the poorest two characters displayed their alienation from the game either by romanticizing a life of crime or contemplating how to change the rules of the game through united social action. Conversely, those playing the middle-class character most internal-ized the game’s ideology, leading them to vacillate between highs of enthusiasm when financial decisions paid out and lows of self-reproach when these decisions failed. Those playing the capitalist charac-ter registered a tension between the belief that their good fortune was deserved and the recognition that advantages in wealth and privilege made the game unfair. The questions and discussion after the game enabled students to synthesize their var-ied experiences into a new consensus about social mobility: talent, education, and hard work matter less than inherited wealth and privilege. As one student suc-cinctly stated, “Once you’re born rich, you [will] always be rich.”

The fact that 81% of students were will-ing to change the rules of the game in order to make opportunity more equal suggests the efficacy of using game-based learning to promote critical thinking about economic conditions instead of just preparing students for life under those conditions. Admittedly, while students saw a discrepancy between what changes were possible in the game world versus what changes they could effect in the real world, playing Monopoly helped to frame this problem of agency much more poignantly than just talking about social problems alone.

Ultimately, this experiment demon-strates that games offer educators a valu-able yet relatively unexplored medium for teaching and learning. With the


application of strategic modifications and thought-provoking prompts, The Sims, Monopoly, and many other digital and non-digital games can be used to codify and examine important themes, simulate new consciousness-raising experiences, or both. We can and should incorporate games and game principles into our peda-gogies. However, we must do so with an awareness of the pre-existing ideological valences that games carry and with clar-ity of purpose about how and why we use games. We have two choices: apply game-based learning as an accessory to education’s traditional mission of social reproduction, churning out a new breed of worker for post-industrial capitalism, or practice a critical gaming pedagogy that uses games to reshape this mission and open up new alternatives. It’s your move!

Notes1 To play or preview America’s Army, go to www.americasarmy.com. The experi-mental “Army Experience Center” is an arcade-style recruitment center located in Franklin Mills Mall outside Philadelphia. For more on this, go to www.thearmyex-perience.com. The “Narratoria Project” at the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) has been developing even more high-tech simulators for the U.S. military that use artificial intelligence to generate digi-tal interactive narratives. One narrative teaches soldiers how to interact with Iraqi civilians in occupied areas. Go to http://ict.usc.edu. See also Martin van Velsen, “Narratoria: An Authoring Suite for Digi-tal Interactive Narrative” at http://ict.usc.edu/files/publications/FLAIRS21Van-VelsenM.pdf and “Towards Real-time Authoring of Believable Agents in Interac-tive Narrative” at http://ict.usc.edu/files/publications/van_velsen_IVA08.pdf.

2 The commercial edutainment industry began with single-player video games like Oregon Trail (to teach history), Sim Earth (to teach chemistry and biology), and Math Blaster. But the next generation of edutain-ment services is Internet-based and offers virtual learning communities with Web 2.0 features. These include Quest Atlantis, Second Life, and Metaplace.

3 After the Columbine shootings, Henry Jenkins, a media scholar from MIT who promotes video game-based learning, was asked to testify before a U.S. Sen-ate Commerce Committee on the topic of “Marketing Violence to Youth.” Jen-kins challenged the pundits by arguing that popular culture and video games in particular were not to blame for the incident. He wrote up his experience in an essay entitled “Professor Jenkins Goes to Washington,” which was widely circulated on the Internet and reprinted in Harper’s Magazine. A transcript of the essay can be found here: http://web.mit.edu/cms/People/henry3/profjenkins.html. The Columbine shootings and subsequent inci-dents of school violence have cast a pall over video game culture with accusations of “violent video games.” Jenkins and other advocates of game-based learning routinely debunk these claims in their research. For instance, Marc Prensky begins his book “Don’t Bother Me Mom—I’m Learning” with a chapter called “Games Are NOT the Enemy.” Grand Theft Childhood, a book coauthored by Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl K. Olson, offers clinical research to disprove the myth that there is a direct correlation between violent games and violent behavior among children.

4 Virtually everyone in the field argues that digital video game-based learning has a natural advantage over traditional learning technologies because of its high media content and interactivity, which mirrors what children experience in the real world. James Gee took a cognitive


learning approach toward video games, arguing that, contrary to what people believe, they embody good learning prin-ciples—thirty-six in all. These include identification (using avatars), interactivity, customization, scaffolding of well-ordered problems, situated meaning, collaboration, systems-thinking, problem-solving, learn-ing from failures (“failing forward”), time-ly assessment, and instant gratification. See What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy. Other scholars have added neurobiological arguments to Gee’s defense of digital video game-based learning. Marc Prensky conjectures that today’s students think differently because of exposure to contemporary media, and that video games better engage their brain’s neural circuitry. See Marc Prensky, “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants.” In Everything Bad is Good for You, Steven Johnson adds that video games can make learning more fun because they tap into the brains natural reward circuitry, raising dopamine levels during game play. This finding is backed by a host of scientific studies. See C. Shawn Green and Daphne Bavelier, “The Cognitive Neuroscience of Video Games.”

5 In his book, Shaffer promotes “epis-temic games”—digital games that teach one to think within the epistemic frame of a particular discipline like law, medicine, or ecology—to train “innovative profes-sionals” who can return competitiveness to the U.S. economy and secure a high living standard. In their book Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology, Allan Collins and Richard Halverson follow Shaffer et.al.’s critique of standardization. They mount a historical investigation into the “high-yield strategies” of factory-style, mass-produced, standardized learning, tracing its origins back to the inception of compulsory public education in the nineteenth century, whose stated mission of “social salvation” required education to produce the greatest good for the greatest

number. In place of this focus on mass, standardized learning, they argue for a new focus on the individuality of learners that is adaptive to the new high-tech era.

6 The nearly 600-page report is titled Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energiz-ing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future (2007). It was written by the Committee on Prospering in the Global Economy of the 21st Century, comprised of members from the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medi-cine. A pdf summary can be downloaded for free at http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11463.

7 Jenkins writes, “These productions were part of a larger strategy—what one executive at the time called Operation Frontal Lobe—to demonstrate the educa-tional value of the then-emerging medium of television. Suppose we wanted to launch a similar effort today—a new Operation Frontal Lobe—in response to the growing crisis in the American educational system. Suppose we offered a new generation high quality content within an equally engaging format. What medium would we choose? The answer is simple—video and computer games.”

8 Go to www.games2train.com.

9 See “The Way We’ll Work,” Time Magazine, 14 May 2009, http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/arti-cle/0,28804,1898024_1898023,00.html.

10 The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that 21 of the 30 fastest growing occupations between 2008 and 2018 will be in professional services that require a post-secondary degree or award. These trends are often used to corroborate the argument that tomorrow’s workforce will be significantly more professionalized and technologically proficient than today’s.


However, official U.S. labor statistics also reveal that only 10 of the 30 occupations with the largest growth between 2008 and 2018 will be in professional occupa-tions requiring post-secondary education. The top seven occupations with projected largest growth are registered nurses, home health aides, customer service representa-tives, food service workers, personal and home care aides, retail salespersons, and office clerks. Significantly, two of the top four fastest growing occupations are home health aides and personal aides. Numeri-cally speaking, among the 30 largest grow-ing occupations, the aggregate growth of those that do not require post-secondary education will be 4,879,000, while the aggregate growth of those that do will be nearly half this amount at 2,447,000. Considering that the former already have a wide numerical advantage over the lat-ter (currently 32,711,000 vs. 11,598,000), these numbers do not corroborate heady claims that the future of work will require a rapid professionalization of the U.S. workforce. For more labor statistics, see the “Economic and Employment Projec-tions” put out by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday, Dec. 11, 2009, and available at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecopro.toc.htm. See specifically the Employment Projections: 2008-2018 Summary, Table 6: The 30 Occupations with the Largest Employment Growth, 2008-18, and Table 7: The 30 Fastest Growing Occupations, 2008-18.

11 On the historical correspondence between work and education, see Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life 13. On the educational reproduction of social inequality, see Jean Anyon’s “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work.”

12 James Donald and Harvey J. Graff have written persuasively about the factory model of education and its labor-disciplin-

ing function. See especially “How Literacy Became a Problem (and Literacy Stopped Being One)” and The Literacy Myth: Cul-tural Integration and Social Structure in the Nineteenth Century, respectively.

13 3rd World Farmer is one of many seri-ous games developed by the “Games-for-Change” consortium, a network of educators, game designers, policy ana-lysts, and activists who produce games for institutional and personal use. See Games-for-Change (g4c) at www.games-forchange.org. Games-for-Change holds an annual convention in New York City to showcase new games and share game design strategies. Serious games focused on developing political awareness have been around for quite a while. They include the decades-old cooperative board game New America, which places students in the role of progressive activists charged with addressing the socio-economic and environmental problems facing North America, and the digital video game Hid-den Agenda, a Marxist-inspired text-based computer strategy game released in 1988 that has players lead a post-revolutionary Central-American government.

14 For more on these concepts, see Shk-lovsky, “Art as Technique,” and Brecht, “Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting” and “A Short Organum for the Theatre,” both collected in Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic.

15 Brecht, “A Short Organum for the Theatre” 192.

16 After a few inquiries, I soon discov-ered I wasn’t the only one using Monopoly in this way. Like me, other high school teachers and professors have struck upon the idea of using Monopoly to teach class. A simple Google search under “classopoly” will turn up several homegrown modifica-tions of the game that can be played for didactic purposes.


17 Magie was a disciple of Henry George (1839-1897), a progressive reformer who preached that land and all other natu-ral resources should be held in common. Georgist reformers believed that private property led to monopolies, declining growth, and greater inequality. They sup-ported the idea of a “single tax” on land that would replace all other forms of taxation and help to restore the common ownership of land, thereby unburdening the economy and providing opportunities for upward mobility.

18 Mantsios’ data upset their faith in the “American dream”—that the United States is intrinsically a meritocratic, upwardly-mobile society with equal opportunity for all. Some of the information they most commonly cite from the essay in their reading logs is:

• The wealthiest 20% of the American population holds 85% of total house-hold wealth

• 60% of the American population holds less than 4% of the nation’s wealth

• 13% of the American population lives below the government’s official pov-erty line (calculated in 1999 at $8,500 for an individual and $17,028 for a family of four)

• The income gap in the United States is 11 to 1 vs. 4 to 1 in Japan and Germany

• The gap between rich and poor is the widest since the government began collecting information in 1947

• Family income correlates with median SAT scores

• A black or Hispanic person is 2.5 times more likely to be poor than a white person

They also get stuck on the idea of “Samu-elson’s pyramid.” Mantsios explains that if one takes children’s blocks represent-

ing $1000 each and stacks them into a pyramid representing U.S. incomes, the pyramid would be taller than the Eiffel Tower, but almost all U.S. citizens would be within six feet of the ground (335). I later cite this figure to justify discrepancies in resource allocation at the start of the Monopoly game.

19 Mantsios cites this quote from How-ard Wachtel, Labor and the Economy 161-2.

20 The initial wealth gap between Har-old and Maria reflects the real income gap between the top 20% and the bottom 20%, which is 11 to 1 (334). Additionally, because the gap between the middle class and the economic elite is much larger than that between the lower class and the middle, as shown by “Samuelson’s Pyramid” (335), I place the largest initial wealth gap between Harold, the upper-class capitalist, and Bob, the middle-class worker. Finally, because women of color are 2.5 times more likely to be poor than white males (345, Table 2), I reflect this inequality in the game by making the two wealthiest characters white males.

21 Gary Alan Fine documents similar phenomena in his classic study of role-playing sub-cultures Shared Fantasy: Role-Playing Games as Social Worlds. See partic-ularly Chapter 3, “Frames and Games,” in which he categorizes the multiple “frames” of experience that role-players must juggle and examines how players often blur the line between frames by exporting knowl-edge from one to another. Fine identifies this feature as a fundamental difference between role-playing games in which play-ers are supposed to identify with their avatars (e.g., characters in the table-top role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons) and strategy games in which the avatar is merely an extension of the gamer (e.g., tokens in board games). Because Monopoly would normally fall into the latter category, the blurring effect that I witnessed in the


students’ responses is atypical and most likely the result of superimposing a human profile onto a normally blank game token (the Monopoly pieces used to navigate the board). This modification produces effects similar to that of a role-playing game.

Works CitedAnyon, Jean. “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work.” Journal of Education 162.1 (1980): 67-92.

Bowles, Samuel and Herbert Gintis. Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life. NY: Basic Books, 1976.

Brecht, Bertolt. Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic. Ed. & Trans. John Willett. NY: Hill and Wang, 1964.

Collins, Allan and Richard Halverson. Rethinking Education in the Age of Technol-ogy: The Digital Revolution and Schooling in America. NY: Teachers College P, 2009.

Donald, James. “How Literacy Became a Problem (and Literacy Stopped Being One).” Journal of Education 165.1 (Winter 1983): 35-52.

Fine, Gary Alan. Shared Fantasy: Role-Playing Games as Social Worlds. Chicago: Chicago UP, 1983.

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage. Trans. Pat-rick Clarke. NY: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998.

---. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 1970. Trans. Myra Bergman Ramos. NY: Continuum, 2002.

Gee, James Paul. What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. 2003. Rev. NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Graff, Harvey J. The Literacy Myth: Cul-tural Integration and Social Structure in the

Nineteenth Century. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1991.

Green, C. Shawn and Daphne Bavelier, “The Cognitive Neuroscience of Video Games.” 1 Dec. 2004. 20 Sept. 2009 <http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/people/Daphne/TCN_of_VGP.pdf>.

Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. NY: NYU P, 2006.

---. “Game Theory: How Should We Teach Kids Newtonian Physics? Simple. Play Computer Games.” Technology Review 29 March 2002. 3 June 2009 <http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/12784/>.

---. “Professor Jenkins Goes to Washing-ton.” Harper’s Magazine (July 1999): 19-23.

Johnson, Steven. Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter. NY: Penguin, 2005.

Kutner, Lawrence and Cheryl K. Olson. Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth about Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do. NY: Simon & Schuster, 2008.

Mantsios, Gregory. “Class in America: Myths and Realities.” Rereading America. 6th ed. Ed. Gary Colombo, Robert Cul-len, and Bonnie Lisle. NY: Bedford St. Martin, 2004. 331-45.

Prensky, Marc. “Don’t Bother Me Mom, I’m Learning!”: How Computer and Video Games Are Preparing Your Kids for Twenty-First Century Success and How You Can Help! St. Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2006.

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index.php?view=article&id=79.

---. How Computer Games Help Children Learn. NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

Shklovsky, Viktor. “Art as Technique.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998. 17-23.

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Wachtel, Howard. Labor and the Economy. Orlando, FL: Academic P, 1984.

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Creating a Space for Critical Talk, Writing,

and Action in the Elementary Classroom

By Stephanie Baker

I am a White woman from a working class family who grew up on a chicken

farm in North Georgia. Dorothy Allison (1988) described feeling that her life was deemed contemptible by others and, like her, I felt the same. I wanted to be some-body else when I grew up. My entire life, I distanced myself from performing as redneck, white trash, trailer trash, or poor.

These performances kept people out of the group that lived in nice houses, valued education, and went to college. So, in my mind, I thought if I act like those people who went to college and live in nice houses, then I will get what they have too. However, if I acted like the people around me then I would be in the same place as my parents and their parents, and above all else I was determined for that not to happen to me.

Just recently, with my enrollment in graduate school, I began to explore why I thought these things about myself, my family, and even other people like my own family. I was 28 when I told university colleagues that I grew up in a trailer. In the back of my mind I wondered, “Will they think less of me?” Over time, I came to see what I felt, and sometimes still feel,

Critical Gaming Pedagogy

Documents