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By
Tzvi Freeman
Gamasutra
September 29,1997
Originally published in the September 1997 issue
of:
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 Features
Sidebar:
The Case for Inappropriateness
A
major concern I have in leaving my child alone with educational software
is a lack of inappropriateness. This becomes of special concern when dealing
with the very young (under seven years of age). Inappropriateness is a
very vital element at that age. The fact is inappropriateness is the small
child's most powerful learning tool. It allows a child to pick up any
object and try anything with it. Mud can be cake. A block of wood can
be a doll. Underpants can be a hat.
Then, around the age of seven or eight, something very dramatic - and
tragic - occurs. It occurs almost universally, in every country and in
every culture where such things are observed. Mud becomes mud. Blocks
of wood become blocks of wood. Underpants come to have but one use. Anything
else is inappropriate.
Show a six year old a rock and ask him what he thinks it is. You could
be in for anything. Wait a few years to ask him again, and it's a rock.
And only a rock.
It seems something innate to the human species. Only a smattering of individuals
manage to escape this syndrome, preserving their sense of inappropriateness
into adulthood. I don't know how fortunate it is for those individuals
- or for the people that have to live with them - but for humanity the
dividends are bountiful.
I doubt we would have mathematics, for example, if it weren't for these
recalcitrants. Mathematics is all about inappropriateness. You apply the
same set of digits and formulas to entirely diverse sets of realities.
And how about original art and social reform and... well, just about anything
else requiring nonlinear thought? Whether Newton or Einstein, Beethoven
or Picasso, Spinoza or the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Karl Marx or Groucho Marx,
it was the child alive within them that made those quantum leaps in human
thought.
What we want to do, then, is to parachute the child gently into adulthood,
holding on tight to that willingness to try the improbable, the preposterous,
and the patently absurd. We must always leave open the option to try out
the ridiculous, and even encourage it.
Software just doesn't lend itself to this sort of thing. Programmers don't
like users who muck about. We like to design controlled environments,
where the user becomes just another fairly predictable object. When you
stop to think about it, little kids are a real pain for all of us in this
industry.
That's why we write for "good" kids. Kids who will press the right button
and only the right button. Kids who like to be rewarded and don't like
to get things wrong. Kids who are fairly predictable - just not quite
as bright as us big people. But also not as promising as the nudnik trouble
makers.
Nobody's going to make a killer app for early learning this way. What
we need is not nice software for good kids. We need great software for
rotten brats. We need products where kids can discover that by doing completely
unexpected and inappropriate things, they can get really nifty things
to happen. We need software where the best solution to a problem is the
craziest one.
After all, isn't that just what good ol' Albert did when he decided that
everything is relative except for the speed of light, that mass and energy
are really the same thing, and time is just another dimension? Sounds
pretty crazy to me. No wonder he did so lousy in school. He'd do even
worse on Reader Rabbit.
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