Lifestyle - Nintendon't

Arun Bhatia

Raju's mother was saying, "Our boy has done well in his term exam, so as a reward, we got him updated versions of Nintendo GameBoy and X-Box."


Mention of those newfangled electronic gizmos set me thinking. I quickly read up on the 10 toys that are currently at the top. And what do you know? Lego and cars (the generic) are among the top 10, but the rest eight are electronic toys that need batteries. By contrast, during my boyhood, we only had gulli-danda, skipping rope and rubber balls. I would, to be sure, not wish such deprivation on our desi kids and do admire the power New Age toys have on our Paplus and Taplus. I probed further, however, and learnt that with such a complete takeover of young brains, electronic toys cause lopsided brain development.

These are findings made by Ryuta Kawashima and his team at Tohuku University in an experiment in Japan. The most sophisticated technology was used to measure the level of brain activity where hundreds of teenagers played a Nintendo game. Other hundreds of teenagers did a simple, repetitive arithmetical exercise and were similarly tested. The expert Kawashima found that the computer game only stimulates activity in parts of the brain concerned with vision and movement.

As against that, arithmetic sums stimulated brain activity in both the left and right hemisphere of the frontal lobe area of the brain that are associated with learning, memory and emotions. In sum, battery-operated games involve overuse of vision and movement and leave certain parts of the brain undeveloped. The Japanese have already discovered that India’s much-maligned education system has many plus points.

The very aspects we desis think of in negative terms — like syllabus load, little room for teachers to do anything except lecture, little or no playground area — are those that, the Japanese think, help India’s children to avoid lopsided development.

India is seen as a political and economic challenger and is the country to beat in a benign rivalry over education. As with many new things in Japan, the interest in Indian-style education has become a social fad, with everyone suddenly piling on. Indian education is a frequent topic in educational fora, talk shows and conferences on education in Japan. Popular books claim to reveal Indian secrets of multiplying and dividing multiple digit numbers. I can almost hear Kawashima-saan saying, 'Nintendon't'.