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I read an article last week by that firebrand of the left, Penny Red. It’s this one, if you care to glance at it. On the other hand if you don’t care to don't worry about it as I’ll summarise what it says. It talks about a question on the Eton scholarship exam (taken at 13) which reads:
The point of the article is that children of an impressionable age are being taught – nay, encouraged – to learn the skills of rhetoric which will enable them to justify morally indefensible actions and, moreover, that some amongst these children may well grow (as this is Eton) up to positions of political power. Teaching children of 13 to think like this, it concludes, is clearly right out.
When I read it something jarred me about this as a conclusion, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it at the time. However, as I sat on the train back from Essex the other day it came to me. The point made - and the conclusion drawn - is wrong, and I’ll tell you why.
When I was 13, I’d been playing Dungeons and Dragons for six years. In that time, I’d played enough allegedly ‘good’ characters to have become at least aware of the skills of sophistry required to justify wholesale slaughter of, well, pretty much anyone who had some gold or maybe a halfway decent magic item that I wanted. If you take the above question and change the words “Prime minister” to “Paladin” and “Rioters” to “Goblins”, the skills being exercised are completely identical. It just makes me aware that my parents should have put me up for Eton when I was 13 because I’d’ve walked it.
But that’s the thing. A lot of the people on my friends list are or have been gamers past or present. And I’ll lay every penny that I’ve got that every single one of them has, at some point, constructed an entirely spurious moral justification or two for utterly outrageous behaviour. Indeed, I’ll add a wager that most of you laughed whilst you were doing it.
In fact, let’s try it. You are a 4th level Lawful Good fighter. A group of orcs recently attacked a local village, killing several members of the milita as they did so. Taking up your sword, you hacked your way through the orcs, including killing several cubs. You got fifty gold pieces, a +2 longsword and 350xp. Write a script for a speech in which you explain why slicing a bloody trail through the orcs was the only option available to you, and was both necessary and moral..
Anyone want to give it a whirl?
The suggestion that a question which tests these skills teaches people “that humanity, compassion, even sense are secondary to winning” is the same thinking that lead to Bothered about Dungeons and Dragons and Dark Dungeons and Mazes and Monsters during the 1980s. If you check out the first of the two links you'll find the following quote: "The police chief said [Dungeons & Dragons] appeals to very intelligent people, who use their imagination to manipulate characters...". Change the words "Dungeons and Dragons" to "Eton" and, well, draw your own conclusions.
The same skills of lateral thinking, imagination and coming up with any old pony to justify killing the orcs and taking their gold that you use in roleplaying are being used at Eton. The difference is that when I was 13 I was doing this as a member of the Wath-upon-Dearne Comprehensive School Dungeons and Dragons club, but if you’d put me in front of this Eton scholarship question the only thing I’d’ve been doing different is wearing a silly hat and a slightly more uncomfortable collar.
From the above, I’d suggest that it isn’t actually the skills being tested for which is the source of the authorial anger. It’s the fact that this question is being asked at Eton. And you know what? That doesn’t matter. Or it shouldn’t, anyway. If those kids weren’t going to Eton, they’d be no less talented or clever, and they’d be playing D&D at school. Or rather, as this is the 21st century, they’d be playing free online PVP games like Grepolis which actively encourage players to game the system with cheap sophistry to stuff every other player. Complaining because people at Eton are being actively taught the exact same skillset available to everyone else in the population is ridiculous. It’s like if Wath Comp had had D&D classes on the curriculum. Which would have been ace.
And that’s the conclusion you should be drawing, really. It’s not that kids at Eton are being taught “that humanity, compassion, even sense are secondary to winning”. It's that they’re being taught to roleplay. In the rest of the world, Dungeons and Dragons, Vampire (especially Vampire), Call of Duty and Eve all teach you that and nobody really seems to mind all that much.
The realisation which really strikes me here is that Eton pupils may well turn out so successful because they're actively taught roleplaying skills. I don’t know a single gamer who doesn’t think that their hobby helped them develop skills like acting in character, lateral thinking, problem solving and, yes, admit it, sophistry which are immensely useful in day to day life. And despite having developed those skills, I doubt they feel they've learned “that humanity, compassion, even sense are secondary to winning” except in the abstract. Just like the kids at Eton.
In fact the problem here isn't that Eton pupils are being taught these skills. It's that the rest of us aren't, and we can only pick them up from Gary Gygax rather than from formal education - and that’s a failing by the state school system, not the private one.
But anyway, in honour of this remarkable idea (and because I couldn't resist), might I present…
The point of the article is that children of an impressionable age are being taught – nay, encouraged – to learn the skills of rhetoric which will enable them to justify morally indefensible actions and, moreover, that some amongst these children may well grow (as this is Eton) up to positions of political power. Teaching children of 13 to think like this, it concludes, is clearly right out.
When I read it something jarred me about this as a conclusion, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it at the time. However, as I sat on the train back from Essex the other day it came to me. The point made - and the conclusion drawn - is wrong, and I’ll tell you why.
When I was 13, I’d been playing Dungeons and Dragons for six years. In that time, I’d played enough allegedly ‘good’ characters to have become at least aware of the skills of sophistry required to justify wholesale slaughter of, well, pretty much anyone who had some gold or maybe a halfway decent magic item that I wanted. If you take the above question and change the words “Prime minister” to “Paladin” and “Rioters” to “Goblins”, the skills being exercised are completely identical. It just makes me aware that my parents should have put me up for Eton when I was 13 because I’d’ve walked it.
But that’s the thing. A lot of the people on my friends list are or have been gamers past or present. And I’ll lay every penny that I’ve got that every single one of them has, at some point, constructed an entirely spurious moral justification or two for utterly outrageous behaviour. Indeed, I’ll add a wager that most of you laughed whilst you were doing it.
In fact, let’s try it. You are a 4th level Lawful Good fighter. A group of orcs recently attacked a local village, killing several members of the milita as they did so. Taking up your sword, you hacked your way through the orcs, including killing several cubs. You got fifty gold pieces, a +2 longsword and 350xp. Write a script for a speech in which you explain why slicing a bloody trail through the orcs was the only option available to you, and was both necessary and moral..
Anyone want to give it a whirl?
The suggestion that a question which tests these skills teaches people “that humanity, compassion, even sense are secondary to winning” is the same thinking that lead to Bothered about Dungeons and Dragons and Dark Dungeons and Mazes and Monsters during the 1980s. If you check out the first of the two links you'll find the following quote: "The police chief said [Dungeons & Dragons] appeals to very intelligent people, who use their imagination to manipulate characters...". Change the words "Dungeons and Dragons" to "Eton" and, well, draw your own conclusions.
The same skills of lateral thinking, imagination and coming up with any old pony to justify killing the orcs and taking their gold that you use in roleplaying are being used at Eton. The difference is that when I was 13 I was doing this as a member of the Wath-upon-Dearne Comprehensive School Dungeons and Dragons club, but if you’d put me in front of this Eton scholarship question the only thing I’d’ve been doing different is wearing a silly hat and a slightly more uncomfortable collar.
From the above, I’d suggest that it isn’t actually the skills being tested for which is the source of the authorial anger. It’s the fact that this question is being asked at Eton. And you know what? That doesn’t matter. Or it shouldn’t, anyway. If those kids weren’t going to Eton, they’d be no less talented or clever, and they’d be playing D&D at school. Or rather, as this is the 21st century, they’d be playing free online PVP games like Grepolis which actively encourage players to game the system with cheap sophistry to stuff every other player. Complaining because people at Eton are being actively taught the exact same skillset available to everyone else in the population is ridiculous. It’s like if Wath Comp had had D&D classes on the curriculum. Which would have been ace.
And that’s the conclusion you should be drawing, really. It’s not that kids at Eton are being taught “that humanity, compassion, even sense are secondary to winning”. It's that they’re being taught to roleplay. In the rest of the world, Dungeons and Dragons, Vampire (especially Vampire), Call of Duty and Eve all teach you that and nobody really seems to mind all that much.
The realisation which really strikes me here is that Eton pupils may well turn out so successful because they're actively taught roleplaying skills. I don’t know a single gamer who doesn’t think that their hobby helped them develop skills like acting in character, lateral thinking, problem solving and, yes, admit it, sophistry which are immensely useful in day to day life. And despite having developed those skills, I doubt they feel they've learned “that humanity, compassion, even sense are secondary to winning” except in the abstract. Just like the kids at Eton.
In fact the problem here isn't that Eton pupils are being taught these skills. It's that the rest of us aren't, and we can only pick them up from Gary Gygax rather than from formal education - and that’s a failing by the state school system, not the private one.
But anyway, in honour of this remarkable idea (and because I couldn't resist), might I present…
