As school districts, states and federal authorities cut back on education, we are witnessing an unprecedented rise in the dropout rate. Nearly one in three students will not complete their high school education, and if you are a student of color, that ratio is closer to one out of two. According to America’s Promise Alliance, 1.3 million students are dropping out of school each year, which amounts to nearly 7,300 kids dropping out each and every school day.
The cost to society is tremendous – estimated in the billions, if not trillions of dollars in additional social welfare, health and criminal justice costs.
Bottom line, you cannot teach children if they are not in school. Nuvana is a way to keep kids engaged with learning, whether or not they are enrolled.
To do this, we look for sustainable methods. These do not include costly virtual worlds adorned with computer-generated animation. Nor avatars that require huge bandwidth. Nuvana games are relatively inexpensive, colored and textured by the work of the community.
Furthermore, keeping kids glued to screens is low on our priority list. We know that young people are attracted to digital devices – and so we provide missions, scoring, social networking and communication over the Web and mobile platforms. But Nuvana’s primary effort is in getting kids AWAY from screens, out into the real world, doing authentic behaviors that have a lasting effect.
We call it, “Playing for real.”