Here in Quebec, less than 50% of boys who start high school graduate from high school. And, for those of you not familiar with Quebec’s educational system, we have elementary school (K-6), high school (7-11) and prep school (2 years) before any sort of higher education. So… this means that less than 50% of boys here finish grade 11. This is incredibly frightening.

Figures like this, in 2004, in this society that I consider quite privileged boggle my mind.

I was thinking of my son in his second year of high school. I was thinking of his friends. I was thinking of what on earth lay ahead for them. Then I started thinking of the huge gap that is obviously a failing on our adult side of the world. And in all of this came, once again, the question “What are we teaching our children?”

In looking at that, I started thinking about my son, his friends, their passion, their “play”. They are avid (!!) video gamers. Now — violence aside (not really but certainly in this discussion) — I am less down on video games that perhaps some think I ought to be. But, on watching my son when he was 9 save his money to buy additional controllers in order that he and 3 friends could play at the same time, after watching them play, after being amazed at the speed and efficacity of their interaction (with each other and the game), after seeing this amazing collaborative effort, I went “Okay. They will be ready for the next collective/collaborative wave that will be our society.”

At that point I actually starting panicking a bit about my daughter and her friends given that they weren’t playing! I started worrying about how such two distinct groups were ever going to find a way to work together with such very differently practiced skill sets.

And… in a different context, that of a jury meeting for computer animation around the same time, I saw films submitted by young men that obviously reflected this video game approach to life… meaning that many films reflected a main character running through “films” the same way a video game character runs through video games. This sort of confirmed to me that “our” boys were learning that they are actually able to affect their environment. This changes everything!

So… school… systems — legal, governmental, and yes educational — are slow to change. They follow shifts in society through the backend. They are always behind. What then does this mean for “our” boys who are indeed “boys” at the present moment?

On one hand, we as parents are teaching them to assume themselves, to articulate their needs and opinions, to question their world in order to make it a better place. Video games and their experience of video games is teaching them how to collectively participate in affecting their world, reach their goals. And then we place them in “our” classrooms. These classrooms sort of go against everything else that we teach them. They are to — unquestionningly — sit as an individual (despite being in a group) and take in what the teacher has to offer them. They are tested on how well this material has been absorbed. They are judged on how quiet and still and “appropriate” they are while “learning”. Egads!!!

Even for homework, my son sits with his friends while still at school in order that they can work in a group… each with their own “stuff” but “doing homework”. These are collective creatures. They work well collectively. They are able to take in the situation, watch and listen to their peers, analyze the whole of it and extremely rapidly give back out. The speed at which they are able to “move” as individuals in a collective boggles my mind. And then they are “taught” and they are “judged” on how quietly and well they, simply, take in and give back out the same unchanged, unaffected by them information. Sure they are “motivated” to speak up and participate but only in very clearly defined windows of participation. Like the first “interactive” games in the 80’s, where interactivity meant you chose between 4 pre-set storylines. No, this can’t work for many of them.

So less than 50% of boys who start high school in Quebec graduate from high school in Quebec. This is disastrous.