The Game of Life

During class this week I brought up the game of Life.  In this game, for those of you who are not familiar with it, you progress through your character's "life" by being assigned at random a career.  The possible career choices are the following: doctor, computer consultant, police officer, athlete, entertainer, artist, salesperson, accountant, and teacher.  Based on which career you get, you are then given a salary to fit your job.  If you want to find out more about this game, click here.  Some of the jobs that have the highest salary choices are athlete and entertainer, whereas those jobs like teacher and salesperson have less luxurious salaries.  This game is mainly for younger kids, so this means that our youth is being taught that athletes are more important than teachers, which I disagree with.  I started thinking about this topic, and realized that the Game of Life is not the only thing that is telling our youth that athletes and entertainers are more important than teachers.

Take trading cards for example.  When I was around 12 years old, baseball cards were popular among boys my age.  We were always competing to see who had the most, the best, the rarest, and so on.  These cards taught us to idolize athletes, and wish that we could grow up to be athletes ourselves.  At that same age, when school was starting to get a little challenging, our teachers were evil in our eyes, piling on the tests and homework assignments.  So naturally, when given the choice, any twelve year old boy would choose athlete over teacher.  This is just one example of how kids these days idolize the wrong people.  If you have another example, please feel free to leave it in a comment below.