'Portal' to be required 'reading' at school
By Winda Benedetti

Wabash College is officially one of the coolest schools I know of.

Freshmen attending the small liberal arts men's college located in Crawfordsville, Ind., will be required to play the game "Portal" as part of a new course that begins in the spring. They'll have to both attend and pass this course if they want to graduate.

Before all you traditionalists get your briefs in a bunch, Wabash students also will be required to read "Gilgamesh," Aristotle's "Politics," Shakespeare's "Hamlet," the "Tao Te Ching" along with other works as part of the class.

"Portal" — a space-and-mind-bending game of teleportation and deception — ended up as studious material thanks to Michael Abbott, who is not only a teacher at Wabash College but also writes The Brainy Gamer blog. His blog is devoted to "thoughtful conversation about video games."

Abbott writes at his blog that, last spring, a small committee at the school was charged with designing a new all-college course. He was elected to the committee to represent the Humanities.

"Enduring Questions" is the name of the course that was developed and approved by the faculty. It is "devoted to engaging students with fundamental questions of humanity from multiple perspectives." Students will consider both classic and contemporary works and will "confront what it means to be human and how we understand ourselves, our relationships, and our world."

"I believe my special purpose on the committee was to help identify films, music, art and other 'non-textual' sources to challenge our students to think hard about the questions raised in the course," Abbott writes. "And so, as you might expect, a little light went off in my head. What about a game?"

He says "Portal" was the first game he thought of, explaining that it's "accessible, smart, cross-platform, relatively short, full of big ideas worth exploring." (He also considered "Bioshock" and "Planescape: Torment.")

After pitching his idea to his colleagues, they gamely agreed to give "Portal" a try — even though they were not gamers themselves.

"After plowing through some installation issues ('What does this Steam do? Will it expose me to viruses?'), we enjoyed the first meaningful discussion about a video game I've ever had with a group of colleagues across disciplines," he said. "They got it. They made the connections, and they enjoyed the game. Most importantly, they saw how 'Portal' could provoke thoughtful reflection and vigorous conversation on questions germane to the course."

Abbott says the school will start using "Portal" in a smaller subsections of the course as they work out some of the technological hurdles involved and then expand to the full course.

Heh, PCs are pretty much required for entering freshmen now ...

I see no controversy here, as long as the classics are included.