Are aggressive, even violent games … including video games … actually good for boys?
The idea for the book began when Tyre, a senior writer for Newsweek at the time, wrote a 2006 cover story for the magazine, called “Boy Crisis.” The article focused on how boys were falling behind in school and what educational institutions were doing to address the issue. The figures are certainly worrying, according to Tyre: “Boys get expelled from preschool at four times the rates of girls,” she writes. “They are prescribed the lion’s share of ADHD medication, they get most of the C’s and D’s in middle school, and they drop out of high school more than girls. Currently, only 43% of undergraduates in the United States are men.” So what’s the solution? Tyre’s suggestion is simple enough: let boys be boys by simply letting them engage in the aggressive fantasies that come to them naturally.
[…] Tyre stresses that many boys relate to violence no matter what their background is. “It doesn’t matter whether Mormons in Utah or lesbians in Cambridge are raising boys. Many of them play and think around violence,” Tyre said during a recent talk with a group of parents in North Salem, NY. “We might see them as doing something potentially dangerous. But actually what they’re doing is playing around with ideas of courage and valor, good versus evil, and teamwork. These are ideas we want to inculcate in our culture.”
I don’t think anyone would consider me a violent person. But I loved playing tag, and “army man,” and other sorts of “violent” games as a kid. And it wasn’t just about “hurting” people, but about organized and pesonal efforts to an end.
Interesting article, and food for thought.
(via Les and Ars Technica)
…and some girls, it turns out.
Boys also need to learn how to handle anger and the associated violent urges. I wonder if the attempt to prevent boys from thinking about violence somehow prevents them from learning this skill as well as they might otherwise. (I suspect this applies to girls too, but I have no first-person experience of being a girl.t)
I think that’s a universal problem in parenting — too many restrictions on options while the kid is growing up means they have no way of controlling themselves when the options are suddenly free and easy (e.g., going off to college). Hilarity and/or tragedy ensue.