I raised two kids, and I don’t think either one of them got much out of school. My son, in particular, was shuffled through a ‘special ed’ system far more concerned about teaching kids to behave well in school than in learning to think and solve problems. I talked to both my kids’ teachers about the yawning gaps in their general knowledge, but the teachers only wanted to emphasize how well-behaved (or not) they were in class.

My son can’t solve simple arithmetic problems (like 27x50) in his head. (Can you?) My daughter got to Spanish III without, as far as I could tell, and her in a school district where over half the students spoke Spanish as a first language, being able to hold a simple conversation in that language. Her Spanish III teacher admitted to me with some anguish that my daughter hadn’t learned enough Spanish to be of any help in coaching the Spanish I students.

She still passed, though. I think she got a ‘C’. ‘C’, in California, is the grade you get for being well-behaved in class. I don’t believe ’not having learned a damn thing in the previous year’ appears on any report card, er, Individual Education Plan.

Sure, the opportunity is there to learn, but how many kids take advantage of that, when doing the bare minimum gets you through with As and Bs? Maybe that’s California’s crappy laissez-faire public education system at work.

Without the pressure to get good grades, kids don’t challenge themselves. If people aren’t continually challenged, they get dumber. Kids come out of a system that has spend twelve years turning their potential into ashes.

And it does a really good job of it, too. Billions have been spent in making kids stupid. Kids who come out bright, challenged, knowing how to learn and capable of picking a destination and knowing how to get there, did it without any help from their school.

Games *can *make you smarter. Poker has lots to teach you about probabilities and judging people. Chess. Any game where excellence counts. Any game that makes you want to be better, makes you smarter.

Games that give you the same experience even if you’re crappy at it, make you dumber. I’m definitely talking about most MMOs here. Pandering for mediocrity. Succeed with no effort spent. Gold star just for showing up.

I love the idea of New York City’s “Game School”. I know exactly what they’re getting at. Challenge kids by using games to encourage kids to want to become better. If they pull it off… make the games challenging, design them so that learning is the only possible way to succeed… Use the raw elemental power anyone can get by when they a challenge, figure out how to approach it, solve it, defeat it… those are the tools that, once given, can never be taken away, apply to every single part of life, and currently are found only in sports.

Never in academics.

This could change it, if done right. Designing challenging games for these students that will challenge them and spark in them the drive to learn and never become satisfied with doing “just enough to get by”… is a far loftier goal than designing the next forgettable WoW clone.

I wish “Game School” all the success in the world, and if I lived in the area and had kids the right age, I would be right there, right now, saying, challenge my kids to never settle for just being ‘good enough’.

Maybe I seem harsh toward California schools. Maybe it was just the two school districts that ’educated’ my children. But the only things they ever learned that they use, are things they learned from their parents. They might as well have skipped school entirely. Me? I failed Algebra I in middle school, had to take it over again, and the challenge of having to catch up to my grade level taught me that math wasn’t hard, it was fun, ended up with a 5 in the AP Calculus exam and a career in software engineering. Being challenged changed my life.

Â