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2009 has started with some interesting challenges. The British Council has invited me to be on the jury panel for a very exciting schools debate called Debating Matters, which they have initiated as part of our Intercultural Dialogue Programme, in partnership with Institute of Ideas, UK, and supported by Pfizer. Debating Matters is a debating competition with a difference for Class XI students. Competing schools will be vying for the top prize of an opportunity to debate with the UK Debating Matters champion school in London in July 2009.

One of the ideas behind Debating Matters was to steer students away from engaging in clever word play. Rather, Debating Matters seeks to encourage students to engage with the specifics and complexities of issues that arise in the real world today.

Watching television rots your brain and time spent playing videogames could be far better employed reading improving books. That’s the conventional wisdom. However, according to Steven Johnson, author of the book Everything Bad is Good for You, fears that popular culture is responsible for a process of dumbing down are seriously exaggerated. In fact, the opposite is the case: contemporary television series have multiple, densely interwoven plots that make far greater demands of viewers than did their predecessors, while complex video games equip young people with the cognitive capacities required to navigate the complexity of our media-rich modern world. Popular culture, so this argument goes, is actually making us smarter.

Proponents of this argument focus on the skills we gain from playing video games. Since the invention of one of the world’s first and most popular video games, Pac-Man, human beings have started learning from a new, audio-visual (AV) form. With the exciting innovation of technology, the video games have spread and developed; and just like books, they have genres. They are incredibly popular: some would say that gaming in India is a religion, and it is certainly big business – according to Sony, the gaming market is expected to grow to $425 million dollars by 2010. The popularity of video games and the idea that they have some educational benefit has become influential in mainstream education. The concept of ‘digital literacy’ has is widely used, while in some schools in India, the Intel’s classmate PC programme is reportedly ‘revolutionising’ teaching and learning, with communication through interactive whiteboards and the use of computer games to transform the teaching of maths and science into ‘fun-based learning’.

But at the same time, the fate of book-reading continues to be a cause for international concern: not just in terms of children’s levels of ‘traditional’ literacy but because of concerns that they are missing out on something more fundamental that books provide: flights of imagination, social engagement, and a sound knowledge of their subject. The delight at the way that the publishing sensation Harry Potter turned children on to reading has dissipated, as it seems that children’s levels of reading for fun may not have increased at all. Artists, academics and educationalists recognise that watching the film or playing the game of Harry Potter is not the same as reading the book; new media, it is said, does not provide the all-rounded benefit to literacy, comprehension skills, and imagination that reading does. Books are very far from obsolete: even those, like Steven Johnson, who promote the benefits of gaming see the need to write their arguments down in a book. And as technology evolves, so too do books – publishing technologies have been transformed, and with the rise of the e-book, we can see a future for the book with no carbon footprint.

Is it time to acknowledge that the problem-solving skills developed by playing videogames are just as important as the ability to plough through a book and regurgitate knowledge? Or does this risk downplaying the significance of knowledge acquired through concentrated study?

On the 7th of Jan I will be witnessing Class XI students debate this subject in Mumbai with a very open mind.. for now would love to see what you all have to say on the topic...