I slept for nine hours last night. I’m probably still recovering from illness. Or maybe I’m recovering from a whole semester of late night cramming. Does it bother me that I put in about 35 hour preparing for classes every week in addition the 15 hours in the classroom, while some of my students haven’t even purchased the textbooks yet? No comment.
Despite their lack of class preparation, we still had some great chats at school today. Everybody wanted to talk about the massacre at Virginia Tech. In my media class, we talked about how the press covered events and the interpretation in the press of events. Earlier in the semester, we had talked about the way that the press covers crises with the eventual attempt to provide meaning to events. Current events conveniently brought the textbook to life. That textbook that some haven’t purchased yet.
The press seems to be spinning events in one of two ways: gun control and campus security. Some are blaming this massacre on the ease of buying guns in Virginia. Others, like a commentator on Fox news, say that if professors were armed, this would never have happened. I assured my students that they really didn’t want me armed. If I was packing some heat, the first ones to go would be the unprepared students.
The issue of campus security was a more serious topic, because it is basically nonexistent on our campus. Anybody can wander into the campus and slip into the dorms or the classrooms without any problem. They felt that campuses should be more secure. The fact that this massacre happened at the hand of a student was a bit of a stumper. Dan Drezner writes that the flags were raised by this guy’s creative writing teacher. Perhaps there should be mandatory creative writing classes for freshman to weed out the wackjobs early on. However, Dan worries that this could lead to over reactions.
I taught three classes, checked in with my mom who was minding a sick Ian, corrected page proofs for an article, and then zoomed home to pick up Jonah from the aftercare program at school.
When I got him, he was distraught. All the boys in aftercare had been playing with their GameBoys and DS’s or Webkins, they wouldn’t share, and he had no one to play with. The girls were playing board games and drawing pictures at the desks, but the boys were clustered around the video games. It’s probably not accidental that girls are better represented in colleges than boys.
Before Christmas, Steve and I went through major soul searching about whether or not we should get the boys the big video game systems. We relented and picked up one of the cheaper models, a Game Cube. We decided that it wasn’t worth turning our kids into a social lepers, because of our high minded, intellectual beliefs. Well, the Game Cube isn’t enough, because the boys all have the deluxe models and the portable games, too. Do we buy more video games, so that Jonah gains some hand in the social dance of elementary school?
It isn’t only access to computer games that boys need for social status. There’s sports, too. Yet another area that we’re failing as parents. We don’t watch sports at home. Steve doesn’t toss a ball with the boys on the weekend. He would rather go for a hike with them or read books. I’ll review the baseball scores, but I would rather sit in Yankee stadium than watch it on TV. Jonah isn’t bad at sports; he got some good hits at Little League on Saturday. But the other kids at school play sports seven days a week. In second grade, the sporty kids play tackle football three days a week. They also attend traveling soccer games. The little girls are at cheerleader practice. The parents drive them around to their games and spend Saturdays in folding chairs on the sidelines. Sports are a big part of suburban culture. One mom said that a typical Saturday could involve a football practice, a game, and then a soccer game. I really don’t want to do that.
So, how much do we turn our lives around to make our kid popular? If he really loved sports a lot, we would help him out. But he isn’t begging for day long sports. He is begging for the computer games. We’ll probably give in. Again. Yeah, parenting is easy.
Apt. 11d 
It seems like preparedness remains a weak point in the US. Hopefully, colleges and schools will create plans for dealing with man-made disasters, alerting everyone promptly, and make sure that everyone (students and faculty) know what the plan is. I am not confident that there will be an improvement, especially since every time someone goes berserk, it’s like it’s never happened before. We need to know how to deal with crazy people, and when that fails, how to turn off “nice” and be effectively aggressive. These people always seem to have a plan. We should, too.
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I’m worried that this will become a mini, college-campus version of 9-11. Even before this event, students of color on my campus were subject to questioning and rejection at off campus parties because some students perceive them as “strangers,” and this racism and classism is legitimized in the name of “security.” I hate to sound defeatist, but if a crazy person determines to do something crazy, chances are he’ll manage to do it regardless of “security measures,” which meanwhile will subject innocent students of color to abuse.
Other than that, though, we also recently caved and bought our begging daughter a DS, to reclaim her from technological 4th grade exile, but she had to do extra chores for 2 months to earn the “credit” for it. The payback is that she learned to enjoy doing some of these chores. I predict she’ll be bored by the thing in about exactly the amount of time it took to earn the “money” for it.
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We’re pretty much video game junkies around here. And Geeky Boy just made honor roll. We’re not trying to make sure our kids are popular. Geeky Boy just commented that he doesn’t care if he’s popular as long as he has friends. Basically, my goal has always been to make my kids comfortable with who they are, something my parents did not do. They were always trying to make me into something I wasn’t–to my own detriment. I started rebelling pretty early because of their prodding me to be different and so my grades slipped as I starting drinking and experimenting with drugs.
Our kids are pretty independent. And we discuss purchases as a family and if they want something, they earn it by doing chores. We give them a couple of bucks when they do the dishes or help with laundry or something. And so most of the time, they have enough of their own money to buy whatever they want. Geeky Boy is king of the bargain, probably from making many trips to the grocery store with me during our lean years.
I think it helps that we now live in a neighborhood where we are near the top of the economic scale. When we lived in an apartment, we were near the bottom. I suspect if we’d stayed in that school district, the pressure to keep up with classmates would be greater. This whole issue is something I’ve been thinking about for a while–and reading voraciously on the subject. I’m sure I’ll be writing on my own blog.
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Sounds like a thoughtful class discussion, even if the students didn’t do the readings (all too familiar feeling).
Regarding the toys, the Webkinz can really be a cheap way to go if you will let your kid have access to the internet since all you have to do is buy one of those toys a year for them to have access to the Webkinz site. The smaller Webkinz toys are about 20$ or so.
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The video game thing for me is a non-question since our house is saturated with them because of my leisure (and academic study) interests. But I think that’s maybe the paradigm shift to consider: does Jonah seem genuinely interested in video games, or only interested because others are interested? I recognize that’s a hard distinction to parse clearly or unambiguously, but it’s important. If it’s the former, I think it’s a no-brainer: games are as good an activity as any other I can think of–you have to have the ability as a parent to allow that your child may form a liking for something other than what you like. If it’s the latter, it may also solve itself. I remember begging my parents endlessly for a skateboard because the other boys had them. I got on my skateboard once I had it, tried like hell to ride it and have fun riding it for about a month. I got reasonably good at it, but really didn’t enjoy it at all, and then I fell off going down a hill and scraped myself up pretty badly. Skateboard in garage, end of story. Now a DS, I admit, isn’t as cheap an experiment, but it’s not a PS3 at least.
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I find it interesting how everyone processes a tragic event like this week’s shooting by focusing on how it could have been avoided. I guess sometimes I think bad things simply can’t be avoided. It’s almost as if the feeling of helplessness is worse than the original event, for the onlookers.
That said, I am a gun control person and I see no reason why anyone needs a handgun. I believe this would have been much smaller-scale if there hadn’t been guns involved. But completely avoidable? Not so sure.
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I think it’s at least worth thinking about the other recent school shooting in Virginia, and how it turned out differently:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_School_of_Law_shooting
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My son is in 2nd grade and very into video games. He’s also an excellent student, great reader, etc. so I don’t feel they have been harmful to his academic progress. It is a MAJOR social thing for the boys his age to be into pokemon games, gameboy/DS, etc. There are a few boys who don’t have them or don’t like them. But I would say that socially video games are pretty important among his set. My 10 year old daughter has a DS and Nintendogs is big among some girls. But video games don’t seem nearly as important for the girls. Maybe some girls are more into them, but not at our kids’ school.
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What school allows kids to bring video games? And what parent would allow a kid to bring those pricey games to school? Doesn’t that seem like a good way to have the game stolen or lost? I also find it difficult to believe that your son was the ONLY boy left out of the video game loop. He may have felt like he was the only one, but I’m willing to bet that wasn’t true.
I’m childless and so maybe I’m talking out of my ass here, but it strikes me as super creepy to be invested in your kid’s popularity. I get that no one wants their kid to be a social leper, but forcing activities or changing values to make your kid fit in better doesn’t seem right. It seems to me that it would teach your kid that personal values are just merely talked about and only practiced as long as they didn’t upset anyone else or were easy to live.
Not to mention the fact that following the herd is easy, but doesn’t really make anyone popular. It just means you aren’t standing out.
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Jen,
I don’t think these shootings can be avoided either, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable to say that the numbers could have been kept down, somehow. I’m no more thrilled than you at the thought of everybody one meets being armed to the teeth, but if just one more responsible person there that day had been armed or had access to a firearm, the casualty numbers would have been far lower.
curious monolith,
I think up until recently, everybody’s stereotype of a mass shooting perp is a moody loner white guy, which is why the identity of the 2001 Washington snipers was such a surprise. But as it turns out, moody loners come in more than one color.
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Catie: you seem to be mistaking wanting something for your child (popularity) with responding to your child’s wants. It’s clear in the post that it’s the child who complained that his cohort was doing something that excludes him; it’s not the mom deciding he’s not popular and so needs to own X or start doing Y.
And yeah, finding that sweet spot between doing what it takes for your child to pursue his hobbies and socialize versus completely rearranging your entire family’s life around something of dubious value to the kid isn’t easy.
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Kai- Laura has written before about one of the factors that informed the decision to allow the video game console into the house was so that her boys wouldn’t be at a social deficit with other boys.
My point was- if you’ve got an issue with video games, but allow them because you think they help your kid’s social status- you might want to rethink it. Because while it may help your kid’s social status, it may hurt their ability to do the right thing if the right thing is uncomfortable or makes them stand out in some way.
I simply do not get wanting popularity for your kid. Wanting friends and a reasonably active social life makes sense. Wanting popularity seems strange to me. Thinking about when I was in grade school- the most popular kids weren’t usually the kindest, smartest or funniest. They were popular for some unknown reason that rarely meant success later in life. And really, who wants their kid to peak in elementary school?
I don’t doubt that all of this is difficult to negotiate.
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Amy P believes “if just one more responsible person there that day had been armed or had access to a firearm, the casualty numbers would have been far lower.”
Hm, or possibly higher, as the eager cowboy missed the gunman and hit a few bystanders..
Lots of guns doesn’t work. I grew up in South Africa, and I can assure you I know this from personal experience. Usually the gun kept in the house for protection is what the household is shot with.
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Maybe I overstated things. I don’t care if my kid is popular or not. I just want him to have a couple of buddies that are good guys. Jonah wants to be popular, but he needs to lighten up there. The problem is that Jonah is under enormous social pressure to purchase certain items. It turns out that his entire class has a webkinz except for him. Until yesterday, I didn’t realize that was the situation and that he was so unhappy. So, we’re going to get him those things, because it isn’t good for his self esteem to always be the one kid in class who doesn’t have something.
It’s not about money. Frankly, we’re doing quite fine right now. We could buy him whatever he wants. I’m just old school about materialism. We buy the kids things on their birthday and major holidays, but that’s it. Maybe little things like some playing cards. Books always. But it really goes against the grain to go out and buy a major thing for no reason, except that all the other kids have it. I hate being strong armed by a bunch of 7 year olds.
I took your points about video games very seriously, Tim, when talked about this last. You did change my mind a bit. I guess my problem with video games isn’t the video game itself. It’s that it replaces other activities, like socializing. My kid isn’t honing his verbal skills when he’s on the computer. If he had his way, he would play video games all day long. There’s no moderation, so I have to be the bad guy and impose some limits.
I spent the day trying to figure out where to buy these webkinz things. Gotta write a post on that.
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The security personnel, who were on the scene after the first shooting, were armed with guns.
So really, the folks who think we would be safer, think we would be safer if random other students in the classrooms that were attacked were also carrying guns. This just seems so patently ridiculous to me that I find it impossible to get my head around it. If random people in the classroom had guns (legally acquired), what’s to prevent them from being the crazy loner (who decides to whip out their gun when they get a question wrong on the test?). Are the odds that the crazy loaner is already in your classroom less than the odds that they’ll walk in with a gun?
Well, anyway (you should another topic for that, if your blog is going to be the one where we try to have a discussion on whether our classrooms would be safer if more people in them were armed).
bj
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Regarding popularity — I think Laura is actually aiming for friends for her child, not “popularity” in the way that those who might have high school in their recent memories are remembering. I worry about friends, too, because I worry that choices that we make as a family (for one thing, we choose differentness in so many ways that are impossible to avoid) will make it hard for our kids to fit in. My goal is to find environments where everyone is so different, that there stops being a same to fit into. But, that’s not an easy one, either.
bj
PS: What is a DS? I have to say that I find the young kids on video games somewhat problematic. The boys in my daughter’s school cluster around the computer (and game room) during free time, and I do think the need to be pushed into more creative/physical choices. It’s too bad if board games/drawing/video games are the only choices (especially if you have to bring your own video games).
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Doug K,
The bit of mine that you quoted is preceded by: “I’m no more thrilled than you at the thought of everyone one meets being armed to the teeth, but…” That makes a difference to my meaning, I think. While you may be correct that in an average situation, adding in another armed person wouldn’t help, I think you need to make an exception for this sort of case with mass casualties. How much worse could things get? I’m also thinking about the LA riots of 1992 (USC is right in South Central LA, so I got to live through the whole thing as a college freshman) when armed Korean (and other) shopowners defended their stores from rioters, since the police were unable to do much at all for the first day or two of the “disturbance”. Undefended stores, as you may remember, were looted and burned to the ground. The first night of the riots, I went up on the roof of a dorm with a bunch of other kids. There were fires burning all around.
What I would suggest is testing, training, and licensing a few responsible individuals and allowing them to keep a firearm locked up on site so that it would be accessible if needed. I would also suggest that the general public needs to be trained in how to deal with violent and unbalanced individuals.
I’m not a gun person and they actually make me rather nervous, for what it’s worth.
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I won’t try to speak for anyone else, but for me the issue with kids, socialization, and technology is neither about gaining popularity nor gaining friends but the ability to participate in the conversation happening among their peers.
My mother reports that when I was in first grade I came home and asked “what’s Bewitched?” and that she and my father reluctantly went out that weekend and bought a used television.
It certainly is possible as a parent to stick to principles of anti-materialism or opposition to the effects of some forms of technology, and it’s also true that some parents simply can’t afford some of these items even if they don’t hold such views. But at least some of the effect of these items is not what kids do with them, but in the conversation that kids have about them, and it is hard to see your child left out of that dialogue–and left out of the social negotiations, alliances, and even critical thinking that can happen between kids in those dialogues.
That said, these screens really are addictive, and there have to be times during the day and week when use of these devices is banned precisely so that kids can engage in conversation and other kinds of activities!
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I seriously think socialization takes care of itself as long as some limits are set.
Let me put it this way. I’m teaching a course on the History of Reading this semester. We’re reading Anne Fadiman’s Ex Libris for tomorrow, a lovely reflection on reading. There are quite a few people in it who mention their total absorption into reading as children, the extent to which they could be lost in a book for hours and hours and hours.
I have yet to hear someone who fancied themselves both middle-class and educated going off on a long worry-tangent about a kid being bookish in that way. We associate people being concerned with bookishness with philistinism, with being the kind of people that educated and sensitive children have to fight against and overcome in order to grow into themselves.
So. Being lost in a book for hours and hours and hours doesn’t help your socialization either. Why is that basically ok with most of the people who worry about video games? One submission I’d make: the people who worry about video games are, sometimes, the equivalent of working-class philistines who hassled their bookish children for being abnormal about three generations past. Sometimes not. The two media aren’t quite the same, not the least in the degree of their general social acceptance among peer groups. Yes, also, they’re good for different things, and certainly books as a total cultural class contain a far broader space of both pleasure and utility (so far). But really, there are things to be learned and done in games that aren’t to be learned and done in books, and like reading, many of the best things take time. If you wouldn’t regard three hours lost to a book to be wasted time, don’t regard three hours lost to Nintendogs to be wasted time.
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Maybe the philistines have a point. I was a HUGE reader as a kid, but years later (while getting myself through a long brutal winter as a study abroad student in St. Petersburg) I realized that love of knowledge wasn’t the only reason for my reading. Probably 1/2 or 2/3 of my reading was done for narcotic effect, in order to escape mentally from my surroundings.
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I’m at the other end of the age spectrum with a twenty-year-old college sophomore. He pleaded in middle school for a game system. We thought long and hard before nixing it. He wasn’t happy for about a month. We told him we had no problem with him continuing to use the desktop computer for purchased games, but nope to the other platforms. He did, but it never consumed his time.
Now he’s an exchange student in Europe, fluent in German. He’s also a classical pianist. He has told us many times he wouldn’t be either without the massive amounts of time he invested over the years. He’s also quite able to play computer games which he does on friends’ systems.
It’s a tough call, but it was only several years later that he told us we had made the right decision for him. He has unique talents among his peer group rather than being another computer game guy.
KarenM in NC
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Geeky Boy spends a lot of time in an online game environment with his friends. We do set limits, but many times, we don’t have to. Often his friends will text him that they want to go shoot some hoops for a while and so he’ll come galloping downstairs and tells us he’ll be outside playing ball. No phone calls. No visits. The conversation occurred within the game. I agree with what some have said about the social capital of certain things–which change so very rapidly. One thing around here that we haven’t purchased that seems to hold a lot of clout with the elementary and middle school crowd are heelies. The kids point them out, but never ask for them.
So I guess I have three points. 1) Variety in activities is usually good, even if you have to “force” it sometimes. 2) Video games can actually be social. And 3) not everything becomes *the thing* to buy. It’s definitely a tough world to navigate.
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Many of the promoters of single-sex public education put a strong emphasis on participation in sports and the athletic culture for boys. Woe to the boy who is unathletic or uninterested in sports!
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Tim, I think you have constructed a straw-mom. Most parents who have issues with video games aren’t narrow minded, fun-squashing shrews. The people who have problems with computers are the same people who had problems with TV in the past.
Like most bloggers, we are a tech-happy household here. We also LOVE video games. Steve’s perfect day would involve nothing but battling Vandals on his Rome game. He would pop open a beer and listen to the radio with no interruptions for hours and hours. Maybe he would grill at the end of the day.
Our only problem with video games is that they can be all consuming. And kids need a variety of foods for the brain. I see kids who do nothing but sit in front of the playstation all day and they honestly have trouble talking to adults.
I also think that there is a difference between smart kids and regular kids. You could probably pop a smart kid in front of a computer or TV all day and they would still turn out fine. Regular kids need more tinkering.
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Watch Dennis Miller blame video games for why the kids didn’t stop the Virginia Tech killer. That’s rather over the top.
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We haven’t really had to battle the video game issue in our house — yet. Our eldest is a girl, and just isn’t into them. I honestly am lost in the video game world (tech savvy, but know nothing about video games). But, I don’t see them as a parallel for books. I agree that books can be used as avoidance of other activities, and those of us with nose-in-a-book kids do worry about making sure that our kids do other things. But, there’s something about video games that seems to encourage over-use (addiction?) to the exclusion of other activities.
Is the difference between books and games that the books end? And then, you have to go find another one to read? That takes time, while you can play a game endlessly?
bj
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Amy P,
“What I would suggest is testing, training, and licensing a few responsible individuals and allowing them to keep a firearm locked up on site so that it would be accessible if needed.”
I was under the impression that campus security and police were supposed to provide these ‘responsible individuals’. Failures of campus security should be addressed before we start spreading the guns around.
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Timothy,
“Being lost in a book for hours and hours and hours doesn’t help your socialization either.”
I don’t buy this. Books tend to be about life, video games tend to be about blowing things up. Reading about life has a fair chance of improving your social skills and empathy, blowing virtual things up ? not so much.
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Play many video games, Doug? I didn’t think so.
Reading about life has a probability of improving your social skills and empathy? That sounds like a nice statement of faith, but I see as many ways to poke holes in it as I do any other catechism.
To be honest, online games strike me as being vastly *more* about sociality, if that’s the good that you’re seeking or value. Reading is much more about self-cultivation and individuation, which is a different kind of thing.
—
Arguing for variety is a good thing. I’m just saying that bookishness (obsessive consumption of books) tends to be treated differently in middle-class parental culture than gameishness even though both of them may have a similar degree of singular concentration on one media form. Laura’s right that antipathy towards games is a successor to antipathy towards television, but I tend to think that proves rather than contradicts my observations, that some of these fears are about successive practices of using media scapegoating as a strategy for class and cultural distinction within middle-class family life. I completely agree that there is a sensible kind of balance to be looked for in which hikes, television, books, conversation, games, and anything else coexist in childhood and family life. At the same time, I think that family cultures tend to move organically towards the “revealed preferences” of family members, and that most attempts to arrest that movement are a mistake on several levels that usually end up creating perverse incentive structures for kids to defy or evade restrictions. (Or saddle kids with hang-ups and cultural incapacities later in life.)
I mentioned Fadiman’s Ex Libris. One of the clever little observations she makes is that there are households where the parents exalt reading, fill their kids bedrooms’ with books, and yet the parents themselves do not have many books nor do they read often. In such cases, she says, it’s hardly surprising that the kids themselves do not read. The reverse is true: parents who demonize television or games without really having any idea what’s on them (as Doug does) leave their kids hopelessly exposed to reality when their kids manage to sneak away from parental control and find out what’s actually on TV or actually in games. If I wanted to moderate a child’s game usage, the first thing I’d do is play some games. Otherwise, it’s like a celibate trying to tell people about how to manage their sex lives.
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Doug K,
I think very few campuses have a security force that could deal adequately with a mass shooting. The numbers aren’t big enough, and (for better or worse) many universities do not arm their security guards. Every two or three months around here it seems like a security guard at a local university winds up being beaten up by students while trying to break up a fight. I think there’s definitely room for improvement there.
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Are there really so many parents who push reading hard yet don’t read themselves (even websites)? Color me skeptical.
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Amy:
I think yes, there’s a lot. There’s a decent amount of research on literacy that suggests this is a recurrent issue, and I would say it jibes with at least some of my anecdotal experience as well. Every single parent I’ve met through my daughter’s kindergarten tells their kids to read, and buys them books, but I know that at least some of the people I’ve met are themselves not avid readers. Which is ok: avid reading is not a necessity in life. But it does produce a tension between what you tell kids to do and what they observe you to be doing, and those kinds of tensions cut in multiple ways. It’s a lot easier to intervene with subtlety and discretion in the cultural world of your children if you work hard to get emic as well as etic insight into it.
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Have you considered working a bit to change your son’s daily culture? I’d be pretty unhappy with an aftercare program that allowed video games- have you spoken to the directors about engaging the children in other types of play?
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The numbers aren’t big enough, and (for better or worse) many universities do not arm their security guards.
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