Howard Jacobson and Computer Games
A couple of years ago, after having heard one platform speaker after another extolling the educational virtues of computer gaming, I read some of the books which seemed to be fuelling the fashion. I did some more detailed research into the games themselves, which worried me even more, having previously not really seen any of the violent or horrific ones. I then met one of the leading neuroscientists looking at computers and teen minds, and ended up delivering a paper on why educators ought to be challenging these claims head on, at a conference in Rhodes. So the recent piece in the Independent by Howard Jacobson on the social impact of media entertainment, immediately got my attention. It is one of the most intelligent, lucid and well informed essays on the subject I have come across. These two paragraphs below strike me as simply irrefutable.No test will ever establish a direct link between an image seen, an emotion provoked, and an action performed. So, no, you can't with certainty attribute contemporary knife-wielding among the underaged to the violence they've seen on films, television, or whatever virtual-reality murder toys they play with. But you can't with certainty deny the association either.What astonishes me is that anybody would want to. Since we know that what we watch and read is capable of moving us to tears of compassion, and not necessarily passive, soon-to-be-forgotten compassion, as witness the charitable giving television is able to inspire, it stands to reason that it can variously move us to rage, to pain, to jealousy, to lust, and not necessarily soon-to-be-forgotten sadism, too.I am just as astonished as Jacobson. Many years ago I came out of a screening of the Silence of the Lambs to hear a little clutch of teenage boys, all undoubtedly under 18, chattering in a way which can only be described as a kind of frenzied titillation. It chilled me then, and still does to think that was the effect the film had on them.
Joe Nutt
3 Comments
Reader Comments (3)
However, I think we have to take the logic of Howard Jacobson's argument seriously to task, since it is the sort of irrational logic that can be used to fuel any kind of scaremongering:
"No test will ever establish a direct link.....But you can't with certainty deny the association either."
This is the same logic that caused the MMR scare, which frightened thousands of parents witless without any proof whatsoever and which has led to a significant increase in the incidence of measles and mumps, two diseases that we had previously all but eliminated. It is the core argument at the base of much counterknowledge.
I just do not believe that we can lump all online or comuter games together - let's do what we can to minimise access to the violent and the horrific, but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Some of the neuroscience around this is, to say the least, contentious - Susan Greenfield's latest book has its critics. I have seen enough examples of highly positive use of games in education to convince me that it is an area worth exploring (especially in the work done by Derek Robertson at the Consolarium - http://ltsblogs.org.uk/consolarium/ - here in Scotland), and is certainly an area that does not deserve to be tarred with any brush that seeks, rightly, to demonise violent and horrific games.
But I’m not sure the comparison with MMR is quite fair John. If my reading of that affair has any truth to it, it was a very good example of a researcher looking for a predetermined result…and a higher profile. What impressed me about Jacobson’s argument is that it is simply illogical to hold the belief that visual representations, whatever form they may take, theatre, film, music… computer games have the power to move us positively, and not that they also have the power to corrupt. I don’t want to throw the baby out at all, I just feel we need to be a little bit more cautious when we are dealing with children. I haven’t read Susan Greenfield’s book yet, but I was at her launch event at the Royal Institution a couple of weeks ago and she made one very compelling argument about how we engage with other people’s imaginations through reading, and how screen engagement is qualitatively and fundamentally different. I know you are incredibly busy but if you have time, you might find the paper I gave at the ICEM gives a fairer account of what I really think.
http://journals.ucfv.ca/rr/RR13/article-PDFs/2-nutt.pdf
I would be greatly interested in hearing a little more about the virtual secondary school, if you are able to share.
As to Jacobson's argument, it might be an unfair comparison, but they do, whether we like it nor not, use the same anti-logic to reach their conclusions.