Wabash College, one of only three all-men liberal arts institutes remaining in the United States, has adopted the video game Portal as part of its learning material for freshmen students.
Wabash, with a history stretching back to 1832, has decided that Portal has something to teach modern day students, and it will be presented along with classic works of literature such as Gilgamesh, Aristotle’s Politics, and Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
The man behind this brilliant idea is Wabash College teacher Michael Abbott, who explains via his blog: Portal will be part of a non-optional freshman course which “is devoted to engaging students with fundamental questions of humanity from multiple perspectives and fostering a sense of community.”
Students will explore “classic and contemporary works from multiple disciplines [and] in so doing, confront what it means to be human and how we understand ourselves, our relationships, and our world.”
Other gaming contenders for the course were Bioshock and Planescape: Torment, but Abbott ultimately decided on Portal, due to its easily accessible nature. “Accessible, smart, cross-platform, relatively short, full of big ideas worth exploring. I chose Portal because I thought it would make a good start. A good first impression. A lead-off hitter, if you will,” Abbott explains.
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