Your kids could learn gaming at school – and you should be happy about it

techradar.com:

If I had told my parents that I wanted to study competitive gaming at college, I can only imagine the explosive reaction I would have experienced. Luckily, public opinion on gaming has changed considerably since I left school back in 2010, and an interesting twist of fate has resulted in my younger sibling actually experiencing that hypothetical scenario late last year when they announced that they were going to study esports. To my surprise, I was the only family member who objected to the idea.

For those not in the loop, esports is an abbreviation of 'electronic sports' that refers to competitive video gaming. I was harboring the same reservations that I assumed my parents would – that the chances of a career as a ‘professional gamer’ were slim, and that chasing such a dream came with too many risks. I tentatively suggested safer (albeit more boring) course options that I believed would offer more useful career skills, but was quickly shot down not only by the rest of my siblings but also by both of my parents.

As it turns out, they’re not alone. A UK study from Dell Technologies found that 48% of parents believe esports should be added to the school/college curriculum, while 69% think esports could allow their child to develop skills that they might not get through traditional education methods.

In fact, it's not just parents who had a positive view on esports within education, as alongside the 1,500 parents polled in the study, an additional 500 financial decision-makers such as headteachers and department heads, also expressed a positive view of the subject, with a whopping 79% believing it should be taught in schools.

The same data does also confirm a few suspicions I had though, with only 32% of the same parents