In a world that is opening up more and more to video games as educational tools, there is also this: Red Dead Redemption II will be used for a college course in American history.
We are not new to news of this type, after all, video games are becoming increasingly popular in schools and education in our country as well. With what initially were just experiments and then became solid realities, such as Minecraft EDU used in many institutions, video games have in many cases become perfect tools to bring new ways of teaching.
I remind you, for example, of the initiative of our Andrea “Geo” Peroni (better known as the one who is writing this news) in 2019, when he exploited the Discovery Tour of Assassin’s Creed: Origins as part of a school activity to talk about the culture and history of Ancient Egypt.
I took Assassin’s Creed to school to teach | Special
Today’s curiosity makes video games take another important and notable leap forward, which continue their rise in the university world and this time thanks to the 2018 Rockstar Games masterpiece, Red Dead Redemption II.
The open world western, set at the end of the nineteenth century in America, will in fact be the protagonist of a university course of Tore Olssonprofessor of American history at the University of Tennesseewho managed to give shape to his ambitious project – but which will only materialize from the next academic year, therefore from the autumn of this year.
The course, called “Red Dead America”will focus on some of the great moments in American history and US culture at the end of the 19th century that also find their place in Red Dead Redemption II. The game will be used precisely as a tool to teach thanks to its historical accuracy and the enormous work of realism implemented by Rockstar Games, which has perfectly reconstructed what was the frontier and the complex social and human relationships that characterized the particular moment. historical.
More specifically, Olsson told on Twitter what will be the main topics addressed during the original academic course, among which we find:
- The myth of the border
- The expansion of monopoly capitalism and the great railways
- Colonialism and discrimination against Native Americans
- Inequality and the distribution of wealth became evident during the Golden Age
- Jim Crow’s racial laws in the south of the USA
- The women’s movement for the right to vote
- The Mexican Revolution and its impact on the United States
- The American empire and expansion in 1898
- The cosmopolitan society of the USA, with Italian, German, Chinese and Mexican immigrants
- Degeneration and poverty in the Appalachians, due to expropriation and mining
- The privatization of the police
Naturally we are very happy with an initiative of this type, which we hope will be successful also and above all from the didactic point of view.
Who says video games don’t belong in the classroom? I’m a history professor at @UTKnoxville. This fall, I’ll be teaching a new course titled “HIUS 383: Red Dead America,” exploring the historical reality behind @RockstarGames‘series. What kinds of topics will we be exploring? / 1 pic.twitter.com/wkaHSvz4E4
– Tore Olsson (@ToreCarlOlsson) February 11, 2021
