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THE OTHER SIDE OF COMPUTER GAMES
How war game is real lesson in life
You are a UN peacekeeping commander in Rwanda in 1994.
You’re in the African country to try to prevent further massacre of the
ethnic Tutsis by the opposing Hutus. You’re driving towards a roadblock:
do you smash through it? Or do you stop — not knowing what unforeseen
ambush might be awaiting you? The lives of hundreds of people depend on
this decision — and the dozens of other decisions you take minute by
minute, hour by hour. For the pupils of James Gillespie’s High School,
those lives are computer-generated ones, unlike for the real UN
commanders on the ground 11 years ago. The atrocity in Africa saw an
estimated 800,000 Rwandans killed between April and June 1994, a scale
of attempted genocide not seen since the Second World War. A team of
16-year-olds at the Marchmont school have become the first in the
country to trial a computer game-style simulation of the Rwandan
genocide called Pax Warrior. The programme, developed in Canada by a
cross-media interactive production team called 23 YYZee, is being used
to teach pupils about decision-making in the real world, as part of the
school’s citizenship project. It’s designed to be hard-hitting — it
features a recording of a radio broadcast instructing Hutu civilians to
kill neighbouring Tutsis like cockroaches, some graphic images of death,
and poignant testimonies from family members of those who were killed.
The action starts in a hotel room. Based on a true
story, an informant tells the UN that he has inside knowledge that a
massacre is about to take place and the player must make his or her
first decision. From there, the player is given a number of options at
each situation — those options increasing or narrowing depending on the
previous decisions. It is already used in schools in Canada and, thanks
to the Edinburgh pilot project, may well be rolled out across the UK.
Schools in Holland and South Africa have also expressed an interest —
and since the Edinburgh pupils were featured on ABC television in the
United States, American schools may also sign up for it. The idea isn’t
that pupils will do a better job than the UN peacekeepers — who were
fiercely criticised for the perceived failure of their role in Rwanda.
In fact, the teenagers cannot escape history — the genocide will always
unfold in the game, but at a faster or slower pace depending on their
decisions. Instead, the programme is designed to teach pupils more about
one of the most horrific episodes in recent history — an important
consideration given the criticism levelled at Prince Harry’s education
about the Jewish holocaust after his Nazi fancy dress gaffe. And it aims
to teach young people life skills usually overlooked in subject-based
learning.
James Gillespie’s headteacher, Alex Wallis, explains:
“The focus is genocide in Rwanda but the idea behind it is really to put
young people in decision-making positions about real-life morally
controversial issues.
“If they go through this they have to make decisions — the immediate
impact of which takes them to the next stage of the simulation. For
example, if they decide to just cut through a roadblock, hundreds of
deaths could result from that. “Obviously it will give them more
detailed knowledge of what really happened in the Rwandan genocide but
the goal is really to do with the fact that genocide is still going on.
It lets them decide for themselves whether the West actually failed the
Rwandans, if the decisions taken were realistic, if the UN really had
any power to stop the deaths.
“It makes them appreciate how difficult it is in any world event for the
right people to be there making the right decisions.” But how does this
translate to the real life of a 16-year-old? “They’re all going on to
develop life skills, decision-making and negotiating skills which are
now recognised as core skills on their exam certificates,” explains
Wallis. “Out in the workplace, your subject grades still matter but
they’re no longer the defining thing. It will be part of our PSE
[Personal and Social Education] programme, which is about teaching the
children life skills and a sense of social responsibility to the local
and global community that will contribute to how they behave as adults.”
Among those 16-year-old pupils trying out the
programme is Adam Cassels, whose mother, Sheila Robinson, of Bruntsfield,
is the business development manager for the software and the reason the
school became involved.
He confesses: “I didn’t know anything about Rwanda before I did this. I
didn’t even know it happened. I thought the last genocide was in the
Second World War. This happened in 1994 and we were alive then — that’s
scary.”
“It teaches you the history of what happened and about world affairs,”
says fellow pupil Ewan Patterson. “It lets you know what has to be done,
what was done wrong, and what could have been done to stop it.
“In Rwanda, normal people in the street started killing just because the
government said they should, and it makes you realise that you should
always think for yourself.”
PUPIL Niall Dolan agrees: “I think it’s quite a good educational tool. I
didn’t know much about the UN and the kind of work they have to do so
it’s taught me quite a lot about it. I think you see it could have been
quite easily dissipated and controlled, but just because of the sheer
lack of resources and effort that all the countries made, and for
political reasons, they didn’t do enough. And that’s what led to all the
deaths.”
As part of the programme, the pupils heard a talk from
a UN Rwandan peacekeeping veteran. And pupil Astrid Brown is sympathetic
to the dilemmas facing the UN peacekeepers. “It makes you much more
aware of the difficult choices that the UN had to make. I don’t really
think it was the UN’s fault because they just didn’t have the media to
know exactly what was going on.”
“Whatever happens, everyone dies,” says Ewan. “The decisions you make
just keep people alive for a little longer. I suppose it has to stay
true to history. We can’t change what happened, after all.”
“You’re always choosing between the lesser of two evils,” adds Niall.
“You can never make a really good choice. It’s frustrating because you
see what happens and you can actually listen to people who were there.”
Liam Young admits he finds it frustrating too: “It only lets you go down
the paths of a UN commander, and according to this any decision you make
is wrong. It’s supposed to be about learning how to make decisions but
you come away from it thinking every decision you make will be wrong.
“You’re meant to end up a more rounded person but I think you actually
end up feeling more useless.”
Adam’s mother, Sheila Robinson, says the shocking
material has been introduced after careful consideration.
“When the Pax guys and myself came to the school, we were very careful
to introduce it in such a way that said ‘if you’ve got any problems or
feel this is inappropriate, please talk to us’. There was one person who
had some difficulty but everyone else said it was a brilliant thing to
be involved with and felt they were more than old enough to cope. They
were actually shocked anyone would suggest otherwise.
“There is a pre-learning process before they even get into the software.
There’s an enormous list of resources given to them. There’s also a
briefing from teachers to make sure they’re aware of what they’re
getting into and afterwards, there’s a lot of follow-up work.”
Chief developer of the programme Andreas Ua’Siaghail,
who works for the firm in Canada, elaborates: “Part of it is to get them
[the pupils] thinking about how they can stop these situations from
happening in the future. Within the simulation they don’t get to change
all of this stuff but in real life they do have options depending on how
much they choose to interact as a citizen in their society.
“It’s important it doesn’t talk down to them. All of the footage in the
simulation was seen on TV at the time. This was stuff the media itself
had determined was acceptable and important enough to show.”
And he insists it’s relevant to anybody watching the news today: “The
fact is these situations are very much the same situations that are
going on just now in Iraq and elsewhere.
“Although it’s historical, its application is extremely relevant and it
has reverberations in everything that you see and hear these days.”
Carrie Mitchell
19 January 2005
http://news.scotsman.com/features.cfm?id=68532005
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