A lot of education posts are pretty negative but for a lot of good reason- low pay, examples of the system being broken, endless focus on charter schools, teacher evaluations, and high stakes testing - and they need to be talked about.

But also we need to have direction too. A clear place that all within education can unite around. Personally, I think things such as more social work support in schools as well as being a place for relationship building between law enforcement and the community, a focus on portfolios over high stakes assessment, and a more nuanced system of credits are some good ideas that everyone should rally around.

Here is one more idea that I'm absolutely positive must have been discussed before but I still think is worth discussing further- very high quality video games that put educational principles first- both developed to appeal to how we learn best and deliver the highest quality information that we expect and desire people to know.

Now some of you might say that these already exist and that's awesome. Please share any examples that can come even close to fitting this description for other educators to use.

But what I find is I'm using something like phet skatepark to teach the basics of energy (and it's great! The kids had fun and they really got the relationship between kinetic and potential energy) but most of the kids don't go home and play phet skatepark. Most of my kids are still going home to play fortnight, call of duty, or madden.

I am going to ask a question here but I'm also going to answer it cynically immediately after so that we can get to more fruitful discussion and answers. Why can't there be legion of educational games that come out with this level of quality? My cynical responses is that such a public endeavor would put the private gaming industry at risk and so there would be A.) No funding and B.) No collaboration.

Yet, think of how transformative this endeavor would be to the world and how relatively inexpensive it would be to create something that would like the candles of knowledge for millions or billions of people? I do want to make it clear that a lot of research and fact checking go into a lot of the most expensive games. For example, I don't know of anything that can give the experience of the late 19th century west better than the Red Dead Redemption games, or Call of Dutys or Assassins Creeds historical recreations. The new Spider-Man even takes it a step farther and uses scientific principles of physics and chemistry throughout the game. No one damn deny the popularity and sometimes the facts are so embedded in the story that players don't even realize how much effort went into the accuracy of the experience. For a teacher that's both cause for celebration and frustration. What's worse is that even though most parents are completely fine with even very young students being exposed to these games, teachers often are bound because they're considered too violent or have sexual themes in them.

There are other concerns to consider. There will be areas of contention beyond sexuality and violence that would need to be considered that are controversial today including issues surrounding genetics, climate, and evolution that professionals will often have consensus on and other interests (for better or for worse) will challenge. In my opinion the professional consensus should win out the harder the science (like evolution) without having to give any serious credence to beliefs that it didn't happen (creationists) and instead giving that time to show educated differences within the field (such as when human ancestors first used fire). And with the softer the science (politics, economics, psychology) more exploration into competing theories with a strong focus on the history of evidence, cases being built by proof that could even be explored, if desired, through the game. Also, any public private partnership will have to wrangle with the treacherous intellectual property system (which needs an overhaul nearly as much as education). Finally, there's the obvious concern that making kids addicted to educational video games rather than entertainment video games doesn't change the fact that many kids already spenda dangerous amount of time in front of a screen.

Some might argue by putting principles first the game would automatically be boring but I argue that is not true by evidence of the popular entrainment based games that have a high level of research. When I tell students the law of conservation of energy is like energy being immortal like if they were shot instead of dying they turned into a bird or if they were drowned they turn into a fish, they're interested. What is needed are creative nuanced story tellers who could give students that experience of immortality and connect it to the law of conservation of energy because it was fun to do it. We wouldn't have entire fictional universes if people didn't naturally enjoy understanding the universe, history, and the human experience. There can be violence without excessive gore and there can be love without overly sexual experiences, it just takes a little more effort but it can be done.

If we wanted students could pick any day of the year and visit Congress and see the faces of those who served in the house or Senate and the policies they are voting on at the time. They could walk the streets and hear time appropriate conservation and language. For those times we have less evidence of a culture like carthage or the bronze age cities, we allow artists checked by history professionals to give the amount of depth that's appropriate and even ideally there could be several versions of what their culture was like to drive home the point that one version is not set in stone. Teachers could educate on what we do know and don't know from a period and the game would be explicit about what is artist inspired vs historically inspired. Embedded within these time period appropriate games would be the science and literature of the time, which could be smaller games within themselves.

Some might argue this project is too ambitious but I can't believe that it is. We have no shortage of kids coming up wanting to design video games but don't know the first thing about it. A project like this could have students learning different parts of the programming at every level all throughout school making each kid literate in code. College students could compete on similar platforms to choose specific time periods or concepts to develop and they could be showcased at competitions. Private companies could release parallel games to their entertainment versions that focused more on the principles - like the current Spider-Man that has missions that put the education first and it would only be released through educational institutions. Personally, because this is for education and children I'd like to see these games just released free using the incentive to private industries that if a free popular educational version of your game gains traction more consumers will purchase the entrainment version ( that still holds the same educational principles as the game). This way low income kids can still play high quality games without needing to spend money while increasing their knowledge. I refuse to believe that this couldn't be done because we can do anything in this globalized modern world. Any country and corporation that developed this would easily lead the world in education.