The (Underestimated?) Genius of Gamers

In the course of work I came across this quote about science education in America:

"Even those classrooms that do engage in inquiry typically provide in "simple inquiry tasks" rather than inquiry activities where the outcome is in genuine doubt, a hallmark of authentic inquiry (Chinn and Malhotra, 2002).

It comes from a study of – of all things – role playing games, by Kurt Squire and Mingfong Jan.

Reading the quote brought me to a strange realization. In order to graduate high school, I had to do a lot of things. But what about the things I didn't have to do? For example, not once did I engage in a scientific inquiry where the outcome was in genuine doubt.

I engaged in plenty where my competence was in genuine doubt, which led to a whole host of dubious outcomes. But even in in the depths of the darkest Methyl Blue haze, I knew what was supposed to happen.

But of course I didn’t design experiments, you’re all thinking. Hell, if I did things like that I would be Einstein! Newton! Confucius! (Maybe not Confucius…) That guy who won the Nobel Prize recently because he did something with something and now other scientists can do something else with something!

The thing is, the way those experiments worked, the entire experimental process was redundant.

When I was a kid, the opposite was true. I started life knowing nothing. If I came up with a plan involving my little sister and a sled made from a box, and the plan didn't work, then I had to come up with a new plan involving a trash can lid and a box, and if that didn’t work, then I had to find a new hill altogether, and so on.

If this is also how scientists learn, that explains why so many of the world’s greatest inventions have been mistakes. Invention isn’t what happens when you go to the drawing board, it’s what happens when you go back to the drawing board.

But wait, you’re thinking. Most schools don’t have the facilities to support higher-order scientific inquiry.

This might not the case. One of my most interesting high school experiments involved dropping an egg from a great height. In order to determine how impact acted upon the fragile egg, my partner and I had to make some diagrams, come up with an impulse estimate, and then design a little “egg-carrier.” The egg, ensconced in carrier, was ceremoniously dropped two stories.

Our egg survived. Others were not so lucky.

But what if all those people who weren’t so lucky had to go back and re-design their egg carriers? What if we all had to do that when one of our experiments didn’t work?

The reason role playing games reflect this process so well is because they offer no guides or guarantees. Playing one is like stepping into a new world. It’s like the day you were born. You don’t know the rules. You can only experiment, and through experimentation, survive.

Philosophers, as any good IB knows, recognize two forms of knowledge. Knowledge gained through being told (don’t touch the electrical outlet) and knowledge gained through experience (really, don’t touch it).

Is knowledge gained through experimentation different? Does it fall under experiential knowledge, or is it something else altogether? A fusion of those two forms? I’m sure the pros (Plato? Mill? Aristotle? That guy who said something about something?) have tacked this one. I’m just bringing it up.

And here’s my other question: remember all those computer and science nerds people made fun of in high school for their gaming ways? What if all that time, all those kids were learning how to think? What if some people have a gift for original inquiry, and those people are drawn to gaming, with its complex world of unintelligible rules?

I, for one, have never played an alternate reality or role playing game. But maybe I should start.