Questão de Língua Inglesa

– 1 – This text refers to questions from 26 through 31. Games lessons 1 Since the beginning of mass education, schools have relied on what is known in educational circles as “chalk and talk”. Chalk and blackboard may sometimes be replaced 4 by felt-tip pens and a whiteboard, and electronics in the form of computers may sometimes be bolted on, but the idea of a pedagogue leading his pupils more or less willingly through 7 a day based on periods of study of recognisable academic disciplines, such as mathematics, physics, history, geography and whatever the local language happens to be, has rarely 10 been abandoned. Abandoning it, though, is what Katie Salen hopes to do. Ms. Salen is a games designer and a professor of 13 design and technology at Parsons The New School for Design, in New York. She is also the moving spirit behind Quest to Learn, a new, taxpayer-funded school in that city 16 which is about to open its doors to pupils who will never suffer the indignity of snoring through double French but will, rather, spend their entire days playing games. 19 Quest to Learn draws on many roots. One is the research of James Gee of the University of Wisconsin. In 2003 Dr Gee published a book called What video games 22 have to teach us about learning and literacy, in which he argued that playing such games helps people develop a sense of identity, grasp meaning, learn to follow commands and 25 even pick role models. Whether things will work the way Ms. Salen hopes will, itself, take a few years to find out. The school plans to 28 admit pupils at the age of 12 and keep them until they are 18, so the first batch will not leave until 2016. If it fails, traditionalists will no doubt scoff at the idea that teaching through playing games was ever seriously entertained. If it 31 succeeds, though, it will provide a model that could make chalk and talk redundant. And it will have shown that in 34 education, as in other fields of activity, it is not enough just to apply new technologies to existing processes — for maximum effect you have to apply them in new and 37 imaginative ways. Internet: <www.economist.com> (adapted).