There’s no question about the quality of story-telling Telltale’s The Walking Dead series brings to the table. The game is well-known for focusing on interaction among characters and hard decision making. Tobias Staaby, an ethics teacher at the Norwegian Nordahl Grieg High-School certainly believes that the game has much to teach in terms of moral values and ethics. Thus, he decided to use the game as a course material in order to instill values in his students.
The idea might seem odd at a first glance, but the reasoning behind this take on teaching is actually pretty solid. First of all, student-attention levels are almost certainly going to be high. While the game does not necessarily have a complex gameplay system, it’s undeniable how emotionally touching the story it tells is. So, why not show a good story to students, while visually detailing the implications of their choices? Isn’t learning the best when you’re actually having fun in the process? And what’s more fun than watching Clementine grow up under Lee’s guidance in a zombie-infested apocalypse?
The moral dilemmas in the game are more than a solid basis for debates and elaborate discussions, and we’re glad to see The Walking Dead being recognized for this. And, with more episodes of the second season of the game being released this year, we’re sure students at Nordahl Grieg will have plenty of things to debate!
Here is the news report and an interview with the students. Make sure you turn captions on (unless you speak Norwegian of course):
