Pokemon Is Effortless Learning

Every day, my two children come home excited at the prospect of watching their new favorite show, “Pokemon” (short for pocket monsters). Like other parents, I assumed this phenomenon was just a new way to help me spend my hard-earned money on electronic games, trading cards and other paraphernalia.

Pokemon has become an obsession. These Japanese and now American cartoon characters have pervaded every aspect of our kids’ conversations. It has intruded to the extent that when, at our school’s parents’ night, the principal announced a ban on displaying and trading of Pokemon cards on campus, a significant number of parents cheered.

When I told my 10-year-old son Mitchell of the other parents’ reactions, he asked with bewilderment, “If parents dislike their kids having Pokemon cards, then why do they buy them for their kids?” Then Mitchell gave me a closer look into the world of Pokemon.

What can our kids learn from these little creatures? Well, actually more than you would expect.

Math skills: Children, who in school hate doing math, are spending much of their free time calculating points earned and lost when one Pokemon card affects another. The kids get pretty good at arithmetic computations or they lose the game or even their Pokemon card in a bad trade.

Language and reading skills: There is logic to the assignment of names to the 150 Pokemon characters that our kids seem to have memorized--try getting them to memorize the names of all 50 states. Pokemon names are strange but have a rational structure--they are systematically related to visual and behavioral characteristics of the particular creature. Thus, Slowpoke reacts with major delays to all stimulation, and Squirtle squirts.

Economics and negotiating skills: Children must master the skills necessary to negotiate their card trades. Economics and game theory also come into play as the kids discuss how to assign trading values to each card. Is the prized Venusaur card worth one, two or three of the others? There are even informal rules about fairness. Unlike many of the fantasy game characters, Pokemon don’t get killed (they faint) or badly hurt (they are always revived in a Pokemon Center).

There is a lesson in Pokemon for all of us: Kids are learning effortlessly. And they are spending enough time on a single subject to pick up in-depth insights that they would usually not get from a typical textbook lesson. Instead of banning Pokemon from schools, parents and educators should be building on the kind of motivation-to-learn that the Pokemon phenomenon produces.

As parents, my wife and I will continue our efforts to help our children see the fun of learning in everything they do. I wonder why our schools can’t be as fun and motivating as Pokemon?