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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>We have seen the comments on how video games are rewiring our brains, with the modern generation of kids having an entirely different skillset from the ones you and I developed in our own misspent childhoods fooling with Rockem Sockem Robots and board games and such as that. One thing really caught my attention on this Christmas morning. The kids all got legos (they love those things, as I and their parents did) but there is a critical difference. Now all the legos come in kits that make some specific thing. The kids follow an instruction book to make the set. Tragically many years ago, we kids would get legos in the form of a bucket of plastic bricks full stop. I don’t remember seeing any instructions or sketches of things we were supposed to build. We invented stuff. We could stay busy for hours just building random things of lego blocks. Now, they follow as specific instruction set, and end up with a closed-ended finished product, with a lot of very specific pieces, rather than about a dozen or so generic blocks.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Many of us here will spend part of this day with kids, relatives perhaps, or kids of friends, so we will get to see what I am writing about. Now the task is to extrapolate what happens when kids who grew up with these kinds of highly specific toys do in the real world, where everything is accomplished by following a specified and well-documented path to success with little room for deviation.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>spike<o:p></o:p></p></div></body></html>