If you weren't already aware, videogame writing is not my actual profession. It's more of a hobby. And because I do a lot of my writing while I have downtime at work, both teaching and videogaming have been occupying the same mental space in my head for a little while.
Teachers are starting to break out of the mold of "here's a book, now do some questions" (or, at least, the more progressive among us are). Films aren't just being shown as a time waster. There's now legitimate film study and criticism being done in classrooms. And plays, performance pieces and visual art have always had some sort of foothold in the Humanities.
Videogaming, though, is largely misunderstood as a teaching tool. Teachers so far have used edutainment (Math and Language Arts-centric games that are used to teach concepts in only the most concrete and direct way), but have failed to recognize the videogame as a textual object on at least the same playing field as graphic novels, which have recently become a part of the curriculum.
I bring up Bioshock not because I think that it'll be studied in schools (well, maybe in universities one day. Too much gore for high schools), but because it sort of represents that hope that games will, one day, be self-aware enough to recognize their potential for a deeper insight into the human condition. A teacher shouldn't use a particular book because it's canonized – the book is a means to an end. By studying books and literature, the student is exercising their literacy skills and applying them in ways to examine the themes. This is why in my classroom, I often use unconventional texts, including movie trailers, advertisements and radio broadcasts. Yet, to some degree, this is still playing it safe.
There's obviously a certain stigma with using videogames in the classroom. They're so entertainment-oriented and, more specifically, product oriented that few would even be worth studying as a class. Bioshock is an exception, obviously, but more often than not, developers aren't interested in making games that would require deep textual analysis. Not to mention that few people would understand why one would use videogames as a teaching tool – parents and administrators, specifically.
As well, the cost of doing this would be prohibitive to almost any school board, and the thorny question of "how do I actually go about doing this?" would come up. Games depend on a huge number of variables that are specific to a player's experience. Looking at a game from a teaching perspective, it would almost definitely have to be a game that you couldn't lose at. If it's a linear-style game, too, it has to be one that everyone could stay at the same pace at. The types of games that warrant consideration in terms of textual analysis are, usually and unfortunately, quite difficult to "pick up and play," so people who were unfamiliar with videogaming might have a problem with this.
This presents a bit of a paradox. Games are kind of a great hope for connecting with otherwise disaffected students. For instance, they're installing a Wii in our school to reach out to kids who have trouble with doing "real" physical activity (as well as for the large number of pregnant students here who can't exactly be expected to do laps in a gym). But on the other hand, this type of analysis would have to be suited towards people who were interested in videogaming as well as literary criticism. This might make videogaming analysis more suited towards a university class, where I legitimately think such undertakings could be successful.
And one day, when this happens (because it will), a whole new arm of serious consideration of videogaming will arise not just from concerned internet bloggers like myself, but with the whole weight of academia and all that comes with it, both positive and negative. There's obviously a lot of hurdles to overcome, but we'll get there.
(For further interesting reading on this subject, check out some articles that I've found here and here. Although, I'd argue that the Wired piece emphasizes a certain type of learning – namely, logical puzzle solving – that I would be less interested in as an English teacher, and which I believe can really kill critical thinking skills.)