The kind of product I shall pick on here has the form of a game: the player
gets into situations that require an appropriate action in order to get on to
the next situation along the road to the final goal. So far, this sounds like
"tainment." The "edu" part comes from the fact that the actions are schoolish
exercises such as those little addition or multiplication sums that schools are
so fond of boring kids with. It is clear enough why people do this. Many who
want to control children (for example, the less imaginative members of the
teaching profession or parents obsessed with kids' grades) become green with
envy when they see the energy children pour into computer games. So they say to
themselves, "The kids like to play games, we want them to learn multiplication
tables, so everyone will be happy if we make games that teach multiplication."
The result is shown in a rash of ads that go like this: "Our Software Is So Much
Fun That The Kids Don't Even Know That They Are Learning" or "Our Games Make
Math Easy."
