Wataru Yoshida was fed up. He wasn’t going back to school. She disliked his teachers, she chafed at the rules, and he was bored with his classes. So in mid-2020, as Japan’s schools reopened from pandemic closures, Wataru decided to stay home and play video games all day.
“He just declared, ‘I’m not getting anything out of school,’” recalled his mother, Kae Yoshida.
Now, after more than a year out of the classroom, Wataru, 16, has returned to school, although not to a normal school. Wataru and some two dozen teenagers like him are part of the first generation of Japan’s first esports high school, a private institution in Tokyo that opened last year.
The academy, which combines traditional classes with intensive video game training, was founded to meet the growing global demand for professional gamers. However, educators believe they have stumbled upon something more valuable: a blueprint for getting students like Wataru back to school.
“School refusal”—chronic absenteeism often linked to anxiety or bullying—has been a concern in Japan since the early 1990s, when educators first realized that more than 1 percent of high school students primary and secondary had effectively abandoned their studies. Since then, that number has more than doubled.
As they struggle to address school refusal, educators have experimented with different models, such as distance learning. Frustrated parents with the means have turned to private schools.
However, the students of the E-Sports High School mostly found the school on their own. To them, it seemed to be a possible paradise.
At a briefing in February 2022, the campus explained that its curricula met national standards, and administrators addressed concerns such as gaming addiction and career prospects.
Two months later, at the start of the Japanese school year in April, 22 boys, accompanied by their parents, gathered for a campus entrance ceremony — a sleek capsule, with glass floors and a ceiling lined with green neon tubes. The ceremony reassured students and parents.
The principal—in the form of an avatar—delivered a speech from a giant screen, then led students through a programming exercise.
On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, professionals taught students strategies for popular games like Fortnite. One such day, students gathered around a blackboard for a lecture on the merits of Street Fighter characters, then put the lesson into practice. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the students studied basic subjects such as mathematics, biology and English.
Unlike Japanese schools, classes started later, at 10:00 in the morning, and there were no uniforms.
One day early in the school year, only two boys showed up for the start of first period, a class on information technology. There were four teachers.
By the third period—biology—five students had arrived. Only two stayed for the last class of the day, English. The teachers were happy because at least they had attended.
“Kids who didn’t come to school in the first place are allergic to being forced,” said Akira Saito, the principal, a cordial man who had spent years teaching troubled students in public schools.
The philosophy was to attract them with the games and then show them that “it is a lot of fun to go to school and very useful for your future,” he explained.
The truth is that few students will become professional gamers. And the trajectories are short, anyway: they’re dominated by teenagers—with their quick reflexes. By the age of 25, most gamers are no longer competitive. The academy encourages students to pursue other industry paths — programming or design, for example — and make professional gaming a hobby, not a career.
But Wataru is focused on succeeding. By mid-semester, he still wasn’t in class much, but he was making the commute for over an hour three times a week to practice. He was less reserved and more eager to mingle with his new friends.
In November, Wataru and a team of his classmates made it past the first round of the national League of Legends competition. They won their first clash. Then a group of older players beat them up. Defeated, they sat in silence.
“I should go home,” Wataru said. Instead, he turned to look at his monitor. He was part of a team, and he was getting better at it, too.
By: BEN DOOLEY and HISAKO UENO
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6611825, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-03-14 22:10:07
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