The Ghost Of Edutainment Still Lives Through Carmen Sandiego
Carmen Sandiego taught me that almanacs were cool and learning was cooler.
I'm going to sound like the old guy that I promised I'd never become when I was a kid, but....back in my day, we didn't really have a mini-computer in our hands to entertain us.
I grew up in a time when computers were novelties - large ones at that, with big, unwieldy monitors with mostly single color screens and that same beige color on keyboards and towers everywhere, whether it was a Mac or a PC. And barely anyone had them at home, either - they were wildly expensive, although that didn't stop my tech-interested dad from lugging one home one day and setting me on the road to computer work and with it, guaranteed nearsightedness.
So it was that in school, when Computer class came around, it was a favorite part of the day. Not only was their cool tech, but it was, honestly, a reason for the teachers to take a break and allow the kids to play games for a bit.
But the "games", from Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing to Oregon Trail, were sneakily educational - sort of. I can, to this day, tell you which rivers to ford and which to caulk with a wagon, all while being able to type random words like I was racing in the Indy 500.
One year, someone who probably remembers making it to Oregon despite getting dysentery made a donation to the school, and the computers were all upgraded to have even bigger parts but color screens and upgraded games-disguised-as-education, and that's when I discovered "Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego". The original, which literally included a copy of an almanac to help you track down the right clues in places all over the world while hunting Carmen and her pals, was one I'd end up exclusively playing when Computer class came around. The idea of being a secret agent, armed with the latest in 1980's and 90's geographical knowledge, who used intuition and intelligence rather than fists and guns, was the coolest thing to me, someone who very much at the time believed they would never be as big and strong as your typical action hero.
Games from these days were commonly called "Edutainment", and today, they're kind of a lost art. In an time when everyone has something in their hands that is much less unwieldy than an almanac and a big ass monitor, PC, and keyboard and ten times as powerful, the games' niche has been long supplanted. This is especially true when kids can be given an iPad or a phone or other device and have access to modern edutainment in the form of mobile apps, albeit of varying quality and value.
Yet recently, because of the PlayClassic games site, I was able to relive my young school days and play world-traveling agent once again. I even used a copy of the year's almanac from The Internet Archive so I could simulate the original experience. Besides discovering that my decades-older brain forgot about how unforgiving the game was for wrong destinations and clues (in my infinite wisdom, I'd let three criminals escape before getting my groove back), it felt fun and refreshing to go back to simple gameplay that also made sure I learned something at the end of the session. Granted, I'm likely to embarrass myself at the next party trying to show off my knowledge of countries that no longer exist, but that's not the point.
The point was that playing a game like the Carmen Sandiego games came from a time when education as entertainment were married and not awkwardly separated in the depths of mobile app kruft - there was an actual market for them that schools took full advantage of. And there was no debate or discussion about what was being taught - it was simply accepted that having students learn about different places, cultures, and landmarks was always going to be a net positive.
Carmen Sandiego is still around, by the way. Netflix subscribers get to play a modern version of the game, casting Carmen, like most villains that are beloved for being more cool than nefarious, as more of an antihero. The same ideas are there in terms of sniffing out criminals, and I enjoyed the challenges, but it was definitely more game than education, which probably misses the point a bit. Yet the fact that Carmen still exists, and has persisted through multiple games, a TV show that honestly had one of the best acapella theme songs ever, and today's mobile game craziness, is a testament to the fact that the edutainment era existed, and that it could still have value in teaching kids today. Does it always have to involve a super cool ex-thief in red playing part spy, part geographer, and part archeologist? Nah - but it sure makes it a heck of a lot more fun.
