Once again, a splendid commentary on The Irascible Professor, this one by Sanford Pinsker, who says that if students goof around doing games all the time and therefore do poorly in their classes, that’s their own problem. (A study had shown that students whose roommates have video-game equipment tend to become gamers themselves, and their grades suffer.)
I’m with Pinsker all the way. If students don’t value their college courses enough to put aside the games, it isn’t the place of the school to wring its hands and try to solve the problem.
Games are just one part of this. Students who are not truly interested in academic pursuits flood into colleges every year and choose to follow all manner of distractions rather than bear down on course material. Mostly, they’re used to education not being very demanding and getting away with little effort. College officials fret a great deal over their educational results, but why should they? Do health clubs worry if some or even all of their members barely use the equipment and are in just as bad physical shape after a year as on the day they joined?