by Heather Foster

Created on: February 14, 2008

Education is a major concern for parents who want their children to succeed in life and have a better life than they, the parents. However, we have seen a steady decline in the education system over the last forty years. We've seen the movements to level the playing field' and the movement to make learning easier' through grading on a curve so more kids could pass. New' math came, confused all of us for a couple of years and went the way of other failed programs. Then came the passing failing students so they did not feel bad' about themselves (better known as the meat grinder approach), and many of those students, while graduating, could not even read their diploma. Many other methods came along as well, including the standardized tests that supposedly proved how well a school was doing teaching their students.

Watching all this nonsense paraded through the schools over the years I marveled at people's tendency, especially educators, to totally miss the obvious. Children learn better and faster when it is fun for them. When education of any subject is more of a game for the students, it becomes more interesting, more engaging, and more fun. Education that is fun makes learning easier and the material sticks in the mind better. That fourth grade summer I helped teach summer school with my teacher I learned how to make learning fun for the students I was helping teach. I'd had other teachers that had also used games to help teach classes as well, and I saw improvement in students that would otherwise have failed. This happened long before the game show, Jeopardy, came out on television and then became a classroom game as well.

Parents can make learning more fun for their children by making games of the material. This way the children can laugh their way through education and learn a great deal at the same time. Teachers can also do this in the classrooms, if they truly care about their students learning and succeeding in school and life. What's more important is that any subject can be turned into an educational game if people put their minds to the problem and look for the fun in the subject.

Look at math and think about it for a bit. Games like bowling, baseball, football, and even darts, to name a few, keep scores, percentages, and statistics. Car racing uses math to determine fuel mileage, speeds, percentages, scoring on points, adjustments on the cars themselves, and driver statistics. NASA and the military use math to calculate fuel, trajectories, loads

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