Gee, What a read! Video Games and Literacy

When picking a book to read for our “Book Clubs”, I wasn’t really sure which text to choose. They each seemed to be worth reading and it was difficult to select just one to focus on. I ultimately settled on James Paul Gee’s What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Literacy and it is safe to say I made a great choice. Anyone who spent even just a small portion of their youth playing video games will be able to instantly relate to Gee’s examples, thus making his connections to literacy more meaningful. While I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a “gamer” by any means (sadly, I haven’t made time to play video games much at all in the last few years) even someone who has some knowledge of computer and console (Xbox, Playstation, etc) games and is intending to get into the teaching profession will find Gee’s book intriguing.

My group members and I decided to each read a separate chapter of the book and then come together and share what we had learned from Gee. While I don’t have the time or space to cover what everyone else focused on, I can share a bit of what I learned. I read chapter 6, “Cultural Models: Do you want to be the blue Sonic or the dark Sonic?”, which I found quite interesting. Gee prefaces the chapter by proclaiming (as he does previously in the book) that video games are full of great content and are not a waste of time. “…video games can challenge players’ taken-for-granted views about the world” which, in turn, “…either reinforces or challenges players taken for granted perspectives on the world” (140).

Gee goes on to present several definitions of what a cultural model is, and it can be tricky to obtain a fast and hard description of this term. I thought his initial presentation was a good overview. “Cultural models are images, story lines, principles, or metaphors that capture what a particular group finds “normal” or “typical” in regard to a given phenomenon” (143). Gee uses games such as Sonic the Hedgehog, Under Ash, Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis, and Metal Gear Solid to illustrate his many points regarding cultural models and how they shape how we view the world. Each of the games ties into a different example of what video games contribute to our literacy. One particular point Gee made that really impacted me was his telling of how the war video games he played totally changed his cultural model of warfare. You can’t always go full Rambo mode and charge full steam ahead; warfare is often slow, tedious, confusing and above all, ‘no one really knows what’s going on’.

Aside from imploring his audience that there is so much to learn about literacy through video games, Gee also manages to tie in education. Cultural models of “motion if caused by force” in high school physics hindered students from grasping how the world actually works. Gee says that while students do bring in helpful cultural models to academic, teachers also need to be aware of negative ones. “Students need to think about them, why they have them, where they do and do not work, and new and different models and why they might want to adopt these in word and deed” (162).