ANOTHER REGRETTABLE EDUCATION FAD: It’s flashy! It’s fun! It’s a waste of students’ time and attention!

“I ain’t saying you treated me unkind,” sang Bob Dylan. “You just kinda wasted my precious time.”

From X:

Figen posts a video of a teacher who brought a PlayStation to class to use Assassin’s Creed to teach about the Industrial Revolution.

This is a distraction and a waste of time, responds Tom Bennett. It gets students to expect bells and whistles.

SoL in the Wild agrees it’s “100% terrible.” He blames constant messages to teachers to make lessons fun, fun, fun. Learning is supposed to “feel relevant to students’ lives, be fun, and revolve around engaging, activity-based experiences,” he writes. But, dressing something as a game “distracts from the content and decreases the likelihood that students actually learn the concept you’re trying to teach.”

I don’t recall any of my best teachers being particularly fun. Just demanding.