In order to teach his students about the industrial revolution, a Brazilian teacher plays Assassin’s Creed Syndicate with his class.
Life during the Industrial Revolution was no walk in the park for most ordinary people. Working days of more than 12 hours, a 6-day week, terrible hygienic conditions, low wages and child labor characterized the picture in many cities. Many younger peoplecan hardly imagine life in this era today.
No wonder, most children now go to school properly and industry has long since stopped relying on the steam engine. Nowadays, we tend to argue about the ethical use of AI. To teach his pupils about life in the emerging industrial age, a Brazilian teacher has come up with an unusual idea:
He playsAssassin’s Creed Syndicate with his students.
The London spin-off of the well-known Assassin series is set in the British capital in 1868 – right at the height of the Industrial Revolution. The story revolves around the twins Jacob and Evie Frye, who come to the city to break the Templars’ control over London and help the impoverished workers along the way.
In typical series fashion, we also meet many well-known historical figures such as the philosopher Karl Marx, the inventor Alexander Graham Bell and Queen Victoria. A perfect game to learn something about this era in school lessons.
At least that’s what Brazilian secondary school teacher Wesley Bernardo thought – and brought his students’ own PlayStation console into the classroom to not only tell them dryly about how people lived back then, but also to show them on screen. A clip of this lesson, filmed by a pupil,recently went viral on Instagram)
.
See how the steam engine works
The video shows Bernardo explaining the principle of a steam engine to his students: they use coal as an energy source. They burn the coal to produce steam, which in turn drives the machines in the background.
In the Instagram post, the teacher also explains the background to this unusual lesson. He asked the school management for permission to play during the lesson because he is convinced that this playful, immersive way of teaching is better at reaching the children.
According to Bernardo, the pupils spend a lot of their free time on cell phones, consoles and PCs anyway. This way, he can at least offer the children something that interests them.
The teacher also already has ideas for further lessons with video games. For example, he would like to useRed Dead Redemptionto explain the colonization of the American West and the concept ofManifest Destiny
usingTekken 8as an example; he would like to deal with cultural differences.
However, this is actually not the first time that games have found their way into school lessons. In Poland, for example, free copies of the game This War of Mine are handed out at schools and universities to educate pupils about the reality of war. Oh, if only it were that easy to learn from games … then I’d certainly be an excellent swordsman now after my 800 hours of Skyrim.
