Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion college - video games.

To understand how the Republican party has evolved, I would recommend books such as "The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945" and "Reappraising the Right: The Past & Future of American Conservatism", by George H. Nash. The absence of histrionic titles can be noted.

I'm pretty impressed that we moved this thread all the way from college and video games to partisan politics and modern political history.

Never let anyone tell you that there's no relationship between video games and politics.

I think my son's interest in political science and history started with video games like Civilization, Age of Empires, and eRepublic. That interest led to a lot of reading and learning about subjects that he might not have otherwise been interested in.

I think a kid who doesn't need to go out and socialize as much as others because he likes to play video games might not be as likely to drop out of college as someone who does not play video games at all. My husband was watching a show last night, I think it is called Campus Cops, and I couldn't help but think that some of those kids they picked up for drinking and socializing would have been better off staying home and playing video games.

At least they wouldn't have been burdened with student loan debt that way.

I suppose that one of my motivating factors that drove me to continuing to pursue college when I was there (instead of dropping out) was that dropping out would immediately place me into the real world where I would no longer be able to play video games and sleep all the time, but rather, I would be forced to work, the thought of which terrified me at the time.

So, there is something to your thinking.

However, I think it's more along the lines of do you want to lose both your eyes or only one of your eyes? Obviously, only losing one eye is better, but it's not exactly a good outcome.

I'm not really with you on this one. How is getting a (free in your case?) college education like losing an eye? I know someone who lost his sight in college. Trust me, he would have been a lot happier to have kept his vision and finished his degree.

What a sad view to think the two options for college students are sitting at home playing video games or being so drunk as to involve the police.

So much for being involved in politics, community service, sports, arts, clubs, working to pay the bills, music, or enjoying the time of life when you've met like minds who are reading the same books and discussing the same questions. If what you want to do is stay home and avoid interacting with other people, maybe online college would be a better choice.

Ok, so it's a bad analogy.

College helped me to learn the opposite of good social skills and good work habits. I graduated much worse off in those two categories than when I started college. My point is that it's not the best idea to spend your time in college learning to isolate and avoid work.

I just read an article in Popular Science about gamification. I like the idea and I also found this: gamification.org/wiki/Gamification_of_Education.

What if good social skills and good work habits could be gamified?

That reminds me of serving fastfood inspired offerings in the school cafeteria because it is the only way to get kids who eat when they've been raised on McDonald's.