Playin' To Win (Excerpt)

There is a revolution brewing. You might not know that it is a revolution because the weapons of this revolution aren’t guns or rockets. It doesn’t involve overthrowing governments. It is a revolution about overthrowing worshiped, outdated institutions and the way they do business. Our country is in trouble, and when a great nation like the United States of America
is in decline, it is up to its citizens to do something about it. We have the responsibility to rise up and insist on the radical evolution of all the major social institutions in our country—schools, churches, healthcare and even corporate America. And one of the main weapons for change…are you ready for this?Video games! No, you didn’t misread—video games. Those electronic toys that many people love to play and others love to hate because they’ve been touted as the downfall of all humankind.

My name is Dr. James Rosser—“Butch” to those who know me. And I am on a mission. I want to help establish a foundation of credibility and legitimacy for the incorporation of video games into the mainstream to address pressing societal issues. I’m using this book, Playin’ To Win as a vehicle to introduce you to my mission and to build excitement about climbing aboard what myself and others call the “Games-4-Good” movement. This movement hinges on an effort to recruit video games and other pop culture icons to become assets that can contribute to the formulization of solutions to difficult challenges confronting our nation.

This book is written for every child that has sat in a classroom and been forced to come up with creative survival techniques to tolerate the onslaught of a monotone, uninspired teacher or professor who was hell bent on taking them through compulsory and out-of-touch lesson plans. Many became casualties of “friendly fire.” victims of “the system,” and history will never chronicle their names. These students were not able to survive because they could not stay in the game. They perished because they couldn’t connect the dots that revealed the image of the big picture. They failed to come up with a credible answer to the question, “why do I have to know that?”

This book is for every parent who has lain awake at night, worrying about what the future holds for their precious children in a world that presents so many influences and distractions. I hope they hear this message: “There is hope and it is going to be okay!” This book is for every politician who has struggled to make a decision to restrict or even censure video games because on the surface they seem harmful to the public, but harsh action would provide a short- lived political advantage. It is for every educator who has wanted to step outside of the box of rubber stamped lesson plans filed with bureaucratic rhetoric, only to be beat down by superiors who were blindly committed to the status quo.

This book is meant to trumpet a call for the empowerment of the people by all means necessary. I want this book to be the birth certificate for a revolution that embraces rather than shuns pop culture, a revolution that eradicates fear through scientific evaluation and validation, a revolution that will be fought from the top down and the bottom up. From the waltz,
the telephone, radio, the movies, Rock-n-Roll, Hip Hop and Rap, and now to video games, pop culture has never readily accepted and efficiently incorporated video games into mainstream society.

As with any disruptive innovation, there is always a predictable response of fear, over-exaggerated calls for alarm, unsuccessful attempts at censorship, rejection and even eradication. Now is the time to break that cycle. Pop culture is a child of society and good can be found in every child. Like a loving parent, society must identify the good in its offspring and nurture it. Let’s not be guilty of abusing a child with so much potential.

And we should do this with the knowledge that we do not have the luxury of gradual intervention. We are facing a crisis in our educational system; millions of our children are underachieving. If our children are not motivated to engage in the learning process, and if process participation does not translate into real world relevance, our great American culture is “kaput.”
Because it is so crucial to the cause of revitalizing our nation, this book is not meant to be hidden away in the education or textbook section of the library or bookstore. It is not meant to be placed in your elephant graveyard of book titles stacked in a corner. I hope you will spill coffee in it because what you read shocks or thrills you with the expanse of
its possibilities. I want you to use this book as a resource that you can turn to again and again, not only for reference, but also for inspiration and entertainment.

This book is a fervent reminder that change, especially when it is connected to something of significance, is not accomplished by pure intellect that resides within your cranial vault, but rather victory is ultimately dependent upon that which resides within your heart.

Finally, this book is absolutely not meant to be some self-salvation for the world. It is what it is—One man’s attempt to assist in the establishment of a credible hope that has the potential to shape a planet with a future that will be greater than its past.
To make our future great, we need to revolutionize the way we educate, train and empower our citizens. To make any revolution successful, we must all select a part—big or small—where we can get busy making contributions.

In the book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell used an example of the power of a social epidemic to spark the resurgence of Hush Puppies® shoes in American and global fashion. If a social epidemic can help turn Hush Puppies around, maybe applying some of the same principles could lead the empowerment revolution to cross a threshold, tip and spread like wildfire. As in all successful revolutions, unlikely alliances must be formed, and past enemies must embrace. Let’s get rid of secrecy and
closed mindedness; open sharing and collaboration must be held sacred. If you are reluctant to join because you are uncomfortable with an intimate proximity with protest, my response is inspired from a message by Martin Luther King Jr.: “Each participant in the struggle must become familiar with peaceful protest.”

For those among you willing to participate in the struggle, protesting the ‘status quo’ by offering up this unconventional solution of using video games on the frontline of learning, must become as familiar as breathing. Do you think about breathing? No, you just do it. Your moment-to-moment contribution to this campaign for change must at all times be directed to Playin’ To Win.
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AUTHOR BIO: Dr. James "Butch" Rosser is a father, author, speaker and the Professor of Surgery at Albert Einstein School of Medicine in New York, NY and Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia. He was previously the Chief of Minimally Invasive Surgery at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York, as well as Director of Beth Israel's Advanced Medical Technology Institute (AMTI). Prior to his Beth Israel career, he held several faculty positions such as at the Yale University School of Medicine where he was appointed Associate Professor and Director of Endo-Laparoscopic Surgery. His instructional methodology, services, and products were developed over a decade of testing and validation and have been used to teach over 5000 surgeons worldwide in the new technique of laparoscopic surgery. His knowledge and skill transfer techniques have been validated scientifically and many papers have been published related to this paradigm shift in educational technique.

To order your copy of Playin' to Win visit www.playintowin.com.