Games and esports are the most important entertainment medium to date for digital youth. Despite their mixed reception from parents and teachers, interactive media continue to engage teens and young adults in ways that few other media have.
Rather than firewalling games out of schools and banning them from teen bedrooms, what if we enriched these new digital playgrounds instead? What if kids' passion for games could be leveraged as a bridge toward academic content and prosocial skills?
Here, Steinkuehler makes the case for games and esports as a Trojan horse for learning in STEM, English Language Arts, and even social emotional skills. By connecting games and esports to culturally valued knowledge and skills, we can raise the next generation as responsible online world citizens and, perhaps, make school itself relevant to their everyday lives again.
