Title:
Students Try to Cut Federal Budget in Online Game
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Education Report.
See text below
Text:
Some people think of politics as a game. But an
online game lets people think of themselves doing
one of the hardest jobs in American politics:
cutting the federal budget. The game is called
Budget Hero. Students in Los Angeles and other
cities have been playing it. Budget Hero lets them
decide how they want to spend federal tax dollars.
The game uses information from the Congressional
Budget Office. It shows what effects each
cost-cutting proposal would have. High school
student Dory Bennett says she thinks spending cuts
are needed to keep the economy growing and keep the
American dream alive: "I want to grow up, go to
college, get a good job, have kids maybe, a dog and
a house." The students consider the same issues
facing lawmakers in Washington. The game was
developed in two thousand eight. In the newest
version, students make decisions about what spending
is important to them. Do they want to reduce taxes?
Spend more on environmental protection? What about
defense spending? Making these decisions helps
clarify their goals. Jane Harmon is a former
Democratic representative from California. She
served in Congress for almost twenty years. She now
heads the Woodrow Wilson Center for International
Scholars, which helped create Budget Hero. Ms.
Harmon says the students are having more success
than Congress at cutting the budget. More than one
million people have played it so far, she says, and
she thinks they have learned at least two things:
"One, how hard it is, but two, that it can be done
if there's a will to do it." Student Jeffrey Burke
agrees. "The hardest thing for us to figure out was
the little cuts like the gas money and stuff,
increasing taxes on gas, because we felt it would
have effects everywhere from the truck drivers
shipping our stuff across the country, or when you
order from Amazon or whatever, to you drive when
you're going to work. I think we need to look at the
little things and realize that just because they're
small money doesn't mean they're small
effects."Joaquin Alvarado is with American Public
Media, an organization that also helped create the
game. He says many of the players "will literally in
the comments ask that Congress play this game to
just get a little rational around the questions that
have to be answered."For VOA Special English, I'm
Alex Villarreal. You can find a video of students
playing Budget Hero at voaspecialenglish.com
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
