I don't watch much TV. Not even much of the streaming variety and almost nothing of the traditional broadcast variety. So when I peruse the monthly update from Twin Cities Public TV its mostly out of curiosity. How long can they keep "Call the Midwife" and "All Creatures Great and Small" going. Clear into the modern era?
But I have a soft spot for their children's programming arm, PBS Kids. Hey, once long ago my son and I were featured on a TPT show called Dragonfly TV! Check it out! Ah, good times. And did the adventures of a precocious kid and his then cool dad launch any engineering careers? Maybe. I mean, yes, I actually know of several.
So I was at first interested then dismayed to read about the latest kids program over there, Skillsville.
Here's the premise:
Welcome to “Skillsville,” an animated series that encourages kids ages 4-8 to “power up” the skills they need for future success in careers and everyday life! In each episode, friends Cora, Dev, and Rae solve real life problems by using the strategies they’ve learned in "Skillsville,” a video game where the players get to manage their own virtual city. By trying out various jobs, the gamers help keep the city running smoothly, and when things go wrong, it’s up to the three friends to find a creative solution
What an absolutely horrible concept! I watched the "Air Traffic Controller" episode. Three admittedly cute kids, who appear to be left untended and on their computers all day, ask a sort of omniscient AI to put them into a virtual reality to play pilots and controllers. The immersion is instantaneous and total. It's way better than their real lives.
And of course they screw up. A batch of beach balls magically appears and the kid directing the airplanes gets distracted. Two planes are about to crash! But then implausibly they stop just short. The kids pause the game, at least the portion of it that was about to consign cute video Beeples to a fiery death, and cheerfully jump about zapping the balls just like in the games with which modern kids corrode their brains.
Now, I have nothing against computers generally or even video games. But they do very little to prepare kids for life.
Dragonfly TV, which I linked to above, was "Real kids doing real science". Ideas were created, tools deployed. Things were built and tested. By real people. Things went right. Or they went wrong. You learned the consequences.
Given the bleak state of education post Covid, made worse by the intrusion of AI that increasingly "thinks" for people, pushing the idea that kids will prepare for the real world by consequence free actions on a video screen is at best a cheap and lazy concept for a show. And if the tykes actually buy into it, a further decline in our abilities to do the things humans should be good at. Using a screw driver. Actual in person interactions. And yes, getting the occasional skinned knee from trying something that was really not the best idea.
Can anyone who has never skinned a knee ever evaluate even day to day risks? I don't want them directing the take off of any airplane I'm on.