School ruins Minecraft
This reference is used to annotate "I would never send my kids to school" (2017) by Piotr Wozniak
There is a simple formula for ruining any learning experience. All we need is to make it compulsory. It is enough to dump some fun learning into the curriculum, and it will be an object of student hate in no time. There is a mortal combat between school and Minecraft. In the battle for young minds, Minecraft and Roblox win hands down. They are overwhelmingly loved by the young generation, while school is a pet dislike. While sandbox games simulate the reality, and allow of natural exploration, school describes the reality in a boring textbook, which is often delivered by an even more boring teacher. When some educators attempted to sweeten the school by adding classes in Minecraft, they noticed that the simulation instantly loses its appeal when it is delivered in the joyless environment of a coercive school.
When Alex Giorev observed that Minecraft is a great metaphor for free learning, he smuggled one of the most convincing explanations for why compulsory schooling will never work:
Lets think about “Minecraft school”. In this school, instead of being free to play Minecraft at any time you wish, you are coerced into playing it at times chosen by others (times which often conflict with your sleep). Instead of freely exploring the Minecraft world you are just given a long row of blocks chosen by “teachers”, and are then told to mine the row without going out of sequence. Instead of choosing for yourself what structures to build, you are tasked with creating predefined structures, the same structures that everyone else is building, and that you will be graded based on how well you built these structures. This starts looking less like a fun game and more like a “prison mine”. But this is similar to what happens at real school. Students don’t get to choose when to learn, what and how to learn, and they are often tasked with solving minor problems they don’t care for
Imagine being sleepy in a stuffy classroom and doing chores instead of exploring. When I read the above excerpt to little Minecraft enthusiasts, their verdict is instant: "Awful!". I wish I could describe facial expression. All adults guilty of glorifying school need to remember that this is how coercive learning feels for children!
Quoted excerpts come from the following reference:
Title: Minecraft as an analogy to learning
Author: Alex Giorev
Date: 2021
Link: https://www.supermemo.wiki/en/blogs/alexgiorev/minecraft