Professor pushing video games to help kids land jobs

I totally agree with this guy. Not because of my love of video games, but because conservative douche bags are stereotyping games as bad. Not all games are bad!

Finally, video games being given their rightful place in society as a respectable and powerful medium.

Anyone notice that the kid in the photo is playing a game on a Mac!

Totally agree, but the trick is to make games that are actually fun and educational at the same time. Off the top of my head:

For example, Civilization is both addictively fun and an excellent tool for learning about history. The scenarios about the various wars are a prefect way to get kids more interested in otherwise dry material, and the game does an excellent job of teaching you the trade off between "guns" and "butter".

Along that line, Defcon would be an excellent way to start a discussion about nuclear weapons, the Cold War and game theory.

And of course, there's the Oregon Trail =).

Couple of caveats though: First, a lot of the benefits can be obtained through board games and simple methods. But, you could argue that kids are going to game no matter what, so if you're a history teacher, it's better that they're playing Civ4 instead of GTA4, right? You could also argue that the class offers adults a way to help kids deal with video game addiction. This provides a legitimiate excuse for adults to be directly involved in the gaming process.

Second, many adults may be out of touch with gamers. It's unreasonable to expect tons of teachers to be familiar with all the games out there. To that end, there's probably some profit to be made by establishing some sort of firm that caters to these teachers, trains them, and maybe even supplies the games themselves.