British Teachers Still Blaming Games for Schoolyard Violence

Games are being linked to an increase in “hitting, hurting and thumping” in British schools.

Children are vile little goblins. That’s a concrete fact. They’re forever climbing, drooling, drawing or choking on things they shouldn’t have touched in the first place. As infuriating as they are to adults, the ungrateful little turdlets manage to be even more unpleasant to each other. They’re getting worse too. In England at least, reports of violent behavior involving schoolchildren seem to be increasing year over year. To find out why, you have to travel through the tremendous buck-passing conga line. The government blames the parents, the parents blame the teachers and the teachers blame – you guessed it – video games. In this case, violent video games that the kids shouldn’t have in the first place.

This coming Wednesday, at the annual conference of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers – the same group that graced our front page last week with demands for more “stringent legislation” regarding parents buying games for their kids – former president, Alison Sheratt, intends to claim that games with “horrific” content are responsible for an increase in violent behavior in schools. She’s also going to claim that teachers have witnessed young pupils “acting out quite graphic scenes” and that games are responsible for an increase in “hitting, hurting and thumping.”

Sheratt, a teacher at Riddlesden St Mary’s Primary School in West Yorkshire, says she’s seen children “throwing themselves out of the window of the play car in slow motion and acting out blood spurting from their bodies,” apparently in imitation of whatever awful murder-simulations they’ve been playing on their consoles.

I don’ think the fact that children, thick as they are, tend to emulate whatever entertainment their parents stick in front of them, but I do wonder why games are singled out over, say, movies, or television.

Sheratt also claims that since gaming is a “fairly solitary existence” it can have a negative effect on communication skills, which affects school performance.

“Sadly, there is a noticeable correlation between the children who admit to playing games and those who come to school really tired,” she added.

Honestly, I’ve spent far too many classes in a post-all-night-gaming-session coma to even dream of disputing that point.

The Association of Teachers and Lecturers will meet this Wednesday. It’s expected that the group will back a motion calling for the Teacher’s Union to commission more research into the link between gaming and child behavior.

Source: The Telegraph