14 DAY TRIAL // When it comes to politicians the customary attitude towards video games is one of distrust, with leaders often citing them as being a bad influence on children and something that needs to be regulated in the long term to limit their effects.
But in a speech made to the Royal Society of London, Michael Gove, who is the current British Secretary for Education, has said that video games can be created to allow children to better understand what they are taught and increase their level of understanding.
Michael Gove said, “When children need to solve equations in order to get more ammo to shoot the aliens, it is amazing how quickly they can learn.”
He added, “I am sure that this field of educational games has huge potential for maths and science teaching and I know that Marcus himself has been thinking about how he might be able to create games to introduce advanced concepts, such as non-Euclidean geometry, to children at a much earlier stage than normal in schools.”
The British Education Secretary has added that his government branch is working with the Stanford Research Institute and with the Li Ka Shing Foundation in order to create a video game-like application that will be used to teach math subjects.
The politician has also cited the example of educational games that have been created by mathematician Marcus du Sautoy.
The profile of games as educational tools might rise in the coming years as more and more classrooms become technology friendly and more teachers come from a generation that has engaged with games since childhood.
Recently, the Supreme Court of the United States has awarded video games the same protection that other media enjoyed because of the First Amendment, striking down a bill coming from California that was set to ban the sale of violent video games to children and institute a tough regime of penalties.