Games, public schools & religion

We are using the terrain editor in Age of Mythology.  This lets kids build virtually any geographic place in an easy-to-use way.  The terrain editor is clear, easy, and produces decent-looking output.  The kids can choose rivers, mountains, oceans, ice, etc…  The idea?  Explore geographic concepts through this terrain editor, and create real-world geographic maps using this tool.

As a precursor to creating their own terrain, we played a game of Age of Mythology (for a PDF version of a presentation I gave on Age of Mythology, click here). 

Today, a student came in and told me they were not allowed to play the game; after some brief conversation I realized the child’s parents had strong religious convictions, and did not want their child playing a game where other gods were worshipped.

From a strictly procedural point of view, this child can no longer play this particular game.  Once a parent says “no”, that’s it.  I’ll try to contact the parent to sort this out, but for now it’s no AOM for this child.  This is kind of sad, because he really loves this game, and it’s hard to watch your friends get excited about something and you can’t do it.

We fired up Sim City 4, which has an excellent terrain editor, and he made some good looking maps…

It’s an interesting issue; many games present their play in mythological context.  Games often include super-natural powers and flirt with the ideas of gods, creation, the universe, and the afterlife (FF X). I think that is part of good fantasy narrative.  Many books, films and television shows also dive into this area as well.

This is the first parent complaint I’ve heard about using games in the classroom. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised it would involve faith.  But still….

What do you think?

On 07 April 2006, Tony Forster inscribed the following thoughts about this post:

You can replace parents’ concerns about paganism with concerns about mindless violence. Many strategy games have terrain editors. Concerns about violence are likely to be less where the combatants are nonhuman. Violence is much more likely to be the issue here in Australia than religion. I would like to see the pdf presentation but your link error 404’s

On 08 April 2006, David McDivitt inscribed the following thoughts about this post:

Bill

This certainly is an intersting delima.  I do not think faith has any more to do with this issue than any other variable.  It is just the most convienient and simplist to explain to their youngster.  Mom and dad probably have more issues with gaming outside of their controled environment than this being a faith issue.  Your student will learn about Zeus, Ra, Apollo, Buddha, Allah, Shiva and many others through out world history.  Mom and dad probably will have little to no concern about that.  One easy concept that can be taught through the worship of any god is that religion, all of them, expects worship of the god(s).  Some do it through kneeling in front of the temple as can be seen in AOM.  Others required human sacrifice (some native american) and yet others sing and give praises (maybe this youngsters church). The playing of AOM actually can honor ones personal god by teaching the differences that exsist between world religions thus connecting why the student is a Christain not a Hindu.  (I apologize for the assumptions of the last statement.)