Dewey and Gladwell, Two Spheres of Life

This week, I read John Dewey's writings on Experience and Thinking and Malcolm Gladwell's Theory of Thin Slices. Both were very interesting, and both were surprisingly well connected to my field of study, one project in particular.

I find John Dewey's conclusions about the strong ties between experience and thinking to be completely applicable to the serious games industry, though he wrote those ideas over sixty years ago. Not only are they applicable, but I think some people still fail to see their significance. School is still to a certain extent taught the same way that it was when Dewey was writing - in a manner that forces students to suppress their physical existence and focus all of their energy on the mental process of receiving and retaining data. ADD is a reportedly rampant problem in our society, but it makes perfect sense to me - when kids in our country are becoming more and more privileged, when manual labor is rarely required of children in families nationwide, what else are they supposed to do with their energy but let it seep out a little bit at a time over the course of the day?

It is slightly more commonplace for more immersive teaching techniques to emerge from classrooms today, but the element of passivity is still pretty dominant. There are definitely some subjects that lend themselves better to physical activity than others, but it is very important for educators to realize that learning is much easier to burn into the brain when it's taken in hand by the learner and applied in the real world. Even beyond the subject's ability to be portrayed in a simulated situation in a classroom, it is entirely understandable that those circumstances under which hands-on learning can take place are not easy to recreate in a traditional education setting. To me, this is where games come in.

Games put you in another world, as realistic or unrealistic as the designer so wishes. As I've learned in my many game design courses, games create a "magic circle" into which players step; they succumb to the small universe of a game, and within that space they are willing to obey the rules of the game. Rules could be anything from pretending that a person with a white hat is a sheep to only walking with your elbows and knees touching the ground. In the educational sphere, games most often take two forms; direct simulation or metaphorical application. I can still remember playing a game in middle school social studies that was meant to show the imbalance of power between different countries in the world, a very direct simulation where one person represents one country. But on the other side of the coin, I also remember playing a cultural game last year in which two different card games being played by two different sets of people represented the way the US is interpreted by foreign visitors, and the way those foreigners treat US citizens when they travel abroad. Whether the educational content is realistically or unrealistically applied, the point is still to get someone actively participating in it.

This brings me to the project that I felt applied rather closely to this, but from the other end of the spectrum. I am working on a game funded by the UNFPA to try to help end violence against women in developing countries. We have only just started analyzing our target audience, young boys, and it has become very apparent that to some of them, they are too directly involved in the problem to feel that they can explore and learn a new way of life. But what if they had a game that allowed them to explore gender equality and freedom for women? How much more impactful would it be to let them experience first-hand something that completely contradicts the reality they've come to know thus far in life? And how hard is it going to be to counteract that horrific real-life situation that has been "learned" by them through experience already? We aren't sure, but we'll definitely try to find out.

Branching into Gladwell's concepts, we had a very limited trip to South Africa to try to learn as much about our audience as possible. I wish I had read his theory of thin slices before I went, because at the time it felt like we couldn't possibly learn enough in the span of one week. We've been shooting for a thick slice of South African boys, and even if that's what we need in the end, I think a thin slice would be a wonderful starting place. We saw a few homes, interviewed people on the trivial and the serious, visited schools, and absorbed some local history. Each of these interactions and experiences were such small snippets. We felt like we learned so much from these events, but they have yet to feel like enough. With the idea of thin slices in mind, though, it's easier for me to think that maybe we learned more than we realized.

Critical Thinking: A Definition (of Sorts)

My first assignment: look up or define what I believe "critical thinking" means, state a definition, and make my case for why I think that it is so.

My initial thought when addressing the definition of critical thinking is to say that it means you accept nothing as true until it has been sufficiently supported with concrete evidence or logic. To me, this makes sense because being critical usually means that you will have to be persuaded or convinced of something before you will agree with or concede to an argument. Thinking critically would then be applying this state of being unconvinced to your thought process before responding to a statement or argument.

Tying this into our first reading, "Teaching Smart People How to Learn" by Chris Argyris, it has become abundantly clear to me that in every person's "theory-in-use", which is simply implementation, or lack of implementation, of the rules they believe govern their behavior, there are ingrained actions that we tend to execute without thinking about the why or the support for it. If we were all critical thinkers, we would stop and question these tendencies; or, we would recognize critical thinking in others when these habits are questioned and attempt to find some solid basis for them.

Turning to the dictionary, we find the definition of critical thinking to be "the mental process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information to reach an answer or conclusion" (dictionary.com). This supports my conjecture that critical thinking is primarily an inner set of actions that are taken before any physical or verbal action is produced. It similarly implies that you do not start your mode of thinking in a positive relationship with whatever it is you are attempting to be critical of; you start with a blank slate and use a series of steps to examine the subject and move in either a positive or negative direction in relation to that subject.

I think it is interesting to note that there is no prescribed method of completing those steps that comprise critical thinking as a whole. I can only assume that there are many methods that have been studied and recommended by critical thinking scholars and enthusiasts the world over, but I believe that as long as you make a thorough investigation of whatever it is you are thinking about, as long as you are actively aware of the critical thinking process and you have in your arsenal strong points of logic to line up with or find missing from a statement or argument, you will undoubtedly perform critical thinking to some extent, if not as skillfully as the most practiced individuals.

Notice of Intent

I forewarn any and all readers: this does not promise to be a stirring, gripping, or mind-tingling blog. I forewarn any and all readers again: it will still aspire to be all of the aforementioned.

Currently, I am taking a Critical Thinking course at my college. While the professor did not show up on the first night of class, my gears are already turning on the subject. As a requirement of the class, I've been asked to keep a journal of sorts, prompted by topics and questions from my teacher. As an extension of that requirement, I've decided to try to post any and all observations I have on the subject, for my own personal record.

So, read what I have to say, but know that some of it will be a result of required action, and the rest will be a result of random action.