Pokémon Translator Says That Games Can Help Kids Feel Smart In An Education System That's Failing Them

When he said breeding I rememberd how the pokemon games said "We don't know where eggs come from" And adults don't know where babys come from LOL.

It helped me learn to read, playing Red and Blue back in the day.

Seriously though, IV breeding is a piece of cake for anyone who can read. The idea that it's complex is a myth. Unless you can't read.

I think about this all the time. I can solve a few different rubicks cubes, memorize lots of facts, but cant do math very easily. It disgusts me that my future depends on me being judged on tests on things that I will never need to know in life. Its one of the reasons that I look to the future with fear

This story really dates me here... but I was taking a computer class in high school, and was learning about html coding.

I found an online IV calculator, and clicked "View Source Code" so I could see the formula that was used, and copy it for myself. I cannot stress enough how much this made me feel like some sort of hacker mastermind at the time.

I was able to copy the equation into my own files, and repurpose them to my liking so that if I hatched an egg while someone in my house was in phone call (because 56k dial-up, lol) I would be able to check that pokemons IV range, and crunch the numbers offline.

To this very day, I doubt I've put that much thought and effort into any professional job I've held in my adult life.

I learned english as a second language thanks to video games. Pokemon red played a big part in keeping my attention.

@pilot For what its worth, in the age of smart phones, you will always have a calculator on you, and many college courses allow the use of calculators on tests, as long as you are able to note the steps you took to get there.

games in general are much more visual, engaging, and rewarding. if learning something like pokemon becomes mandatory, taught in a book by teachers for a set amount of time each day, it could bore anyone

"Everything should be fun" is not a mindset you should teach to a child.

I learned a lot from video games as a kid. Lots of reading comprehension and problem solving skills in games like Ocarina of Time and Pokemon. Harvest Moon 64 was my crash course in time and resource management. Mega Man X was where I learned patience and anger management skills.

If only the games took advantage of the systems they offered to create meaningful, quality experiences.

My son is in third grade and he comes home all the time with work he has done in class that uses Minecraft or Among Us in the work. So clearly some teachers are doing this, and I think it is great. If only they would use actually good games.

@Yhdekskymmenen Not fun, necessarily, but rewarding.

We definitely need to do a better job motivating our kids to learn. I mean "we" as a society, not just as parents.

@pilot If the system has led you to believe that you'll never need to know these things, then that's how it's failed you.

@Desrever I used to solve point-and-click Flash games by using the Tab key to find which items were interactable 😎

He's right. If the only outcome of a correct answer to a hypothetical question, is whether it's correct. It's strongly relying on students caring about learning something for learnings sake.

Whereas if you can apply a skill to something you're interested in, or solves a real problem, even in a game like Pokémon. You can get immediate results, and the practicality of what you've learnt becomes a lot more clear.

If it weren’t for Pokémon, I highly doubt the word “route” would be in such widespread usage.

I've long felt that there were major issues with the education system in trying to force kids to adhere to their line of thinking, as a kid I never liked it because it just wasn't fun, but even as an adult, I'm seeing how failing to relate the material to their interests will make people unmotivated to learn. Video games should definitely be used more in education and the education system should definitely get more of a feel for what students like and try to tailor the lesson plan more around it and guide them towards majors and eventually careers that draw from those interests. All this time they told me that video games are useless distraction from my studies when I could've been leveraging my interests in video games to learn to create content for them and become rich and/or famous, I wish I'd have known that was an option back when I was a kid, because then I think I'd be much better off now. The education system needs a major overhaul for sure.

@imananjidesuka Great point. Love the profile picture, by the way.

@Xyphon22 I see what you mean, but while Minecraft isn't really my game, I feel like we ahould respect it as a game that is actually engaging children and teaching them basic things covertly. How many children didn't know that glass is made from sand until Minecraft taught them? How many children have learned the basic "if/then" principles that factor into coding by using redstone in Minecraft? Again, I can't stand playing Minecraft for any meaningful period of time but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a good game.

Be careful about those genetics lessons, though. Pokémon breeding doesn't exactly follow the rules of real life hybrid breeding. Otherwise, we'll have kids thinking that they can breed a male donkey with a female horse to get another horse (hatching from an egg) that is also perfectly capable of breeding.

They might even start thinking that breeding cows with bulls will always result in female calves.

Then just imagine trying to teach them about the Theory of Evolution...

@Noid There are places where it's common to use "route" to reference either a freeway number or letter-named rural roads, and there are of course classic "routes" like Route 66. It's also used in the name of the largest drink size at "Sonic" drive-thru chains.

@Chlocean It was "Aladdin: the Series" that taught me that glass was made from sand. (An OCD neat-freak mad inventor was attempting to melt the desert into sheets of glass.)

Anyway, don't forget that the edutainment genre does exist. I don't know if modern examples live up to classics like Carmen Sandiego, The Oregon Trail, Number Munchers, or Math Blaster, but there are some ways to still play many of those classics, as well.

There are also like a thousand different versions of games that teach typing (not that they were useful for me, since I've become so good at the hunt and peck method that it's actually faster for me than using the proper method).

Associating a school lesson with something relevant and interesting to a student is a big help in getting the message across. When I was a kid, my teacher was always using real-world examples in math class: cutting up a cake or a pizza for fractions and decimals, a backyard or a room for perimeter and area, a ball for diameter, radius, and circumference, etc. It made the material much more accessible and easier to learn compared to high school. The only real-world application my teachers gave was "you learn algebra to pass algebra class."