Saturday, November 22, 2008

Sandra Day O'Connor and Video Games

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is collaborating with Games for Change, a non-profit company that promotes the development of video games that educate children on various issues. One such game, Our Courts, is a free online game about democracy and the U.S. Constitution.

SDO's involvement in the development of the game stems from her concerns about attacks on the judiciary (e.g., "judicial activism"), which she discusses in the clip below (the full version available here):



In the full version of her talk you can hear her discuss how the No Child Left Behind Act is resulting in the cancellation of classes that teach civics and government, creating a need for other entities to step up and fill the void.

When the citizenry has no idea how our government works, people don't know how to effect change in the system. It's no surprise, then, that citizens do nothing when a certain #43 acts as if he's king.

UPDATE: Just came across this article about US officials flunking a civics quiz. How timely! You can take the quiz here... I scored a 79% - before law school I would have bombed it. The economic questions are way beyond my reach, but at least I got most of the law-related ones correct. In my defense, however, the economic questions seem ambiguous and conclusory, so there. Suck it, civics quiz.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

72.23% on my quiz!

Ramon

Bexy said...

Nice! You are officially smarter than a legislator.