Paradesign,

Other experts argue that the problem isn’t games or technology per se—it’s the thoughtless way that schools are using them. A well-designed game “can be extremely effective in not just getting kids interested in the subject matter, but to help them understand why they’re doing it in the first place,” Jan Plass, a professor of digital media and learning sciences at NYU, told me. He cited a 2008 game called Immune Attack, developed in part by scientists, in which players must navigate a nanobot through a patient’s bloodstream to spur their immune system to fight off infections. He contrasted that with gamified tools such as Prodigy, which simply bolt multiple-choice questions onto unrelated game templates. It’s a lazy approach, but it’s cheap and accessible, and it dovetails with an education system geared toward standardized tests.

For too long, the university has ignored the wisdom of the donor class and hired based on academic excellence. Regrettably, this has led to the underrepresentation of discredited viewpoints in elite higher education. Many ideas that enjoy enormous popularity among billionaires—cryogenic immortality, disregard for punctuation, the Antichrist—have scandalously been excluded from our labs and classrooms. No longer. We solemnly vow to dismantle systemic barriers to inclusion—such as shared governance, apolitical job searches, and the discriminatory practice of vetting ideas—and to ensure that all viewpoints, however dubious, enjoy equal footing in the academy.

Where do I go from here? No matter how rapidly technology changes, I am coalescing around some core beliefs: Things that are worth doing are worth doing well. Things that are done well require time and effort. You make meaning through the doing. Ideas are common; effort is not. There are no shortcuts.