Game Theory

Henry Jenkins III

How should we teach kids Newtonian physics? Simple. Play computer games.

After Sputnik's launch, Bell Laboratories funded a series of documentaries designed to encourage popular-science literacy. Directed by Frank Capra and animated by Chuck Jones, the films coupled Hollywood showmanship with cutting edge research on such
standard school topics as the solar system, meteorology and the human body. Initially aired on primetime network television, they circulated throughout the American education system for more than a decade—much to the delight of school children of my generation. Much of what I know about science I first learned from watching Our Mr. Sun and Hemo the Magnificent. These productions were part of a larger strategy—what one executive at the time called Operation Frontal Lobe—to demonstrate the educational value of the then-emerging medium of television.

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