Certain Swedish high schools add 3 hours of eSports classes a week



Dreamhack Winter 2014 (Photo: Dreamhack)

Three high schools in Sweden will be featuring eSports as a class in the coming semester. Pupils will be able to practice and learn games such as Dota and Counter-Strike, to name a few.

Certain schools in Sweden will now be supporting eSports for the upcoming semester. Three high schools (one in Karlstad, one in Ovanåker and one in Stockholm) will be featuring eSports as a subject in their classes. Neither school will be providing a full blown eSports program but outside of the mandatory subjects such as math and language there will be subjects such as eSports, Dota and Counter-Strike offered for certain alignments.

The eSports subjects will be treated like regular athletic oriented ones, where the students get access to rooms and areas designated for practice and similar. There will also be school teams within the different games, aiming to compete at tournaments such as Dreamhack. Known players and personalities will be invited to give guest lectures. At the school of Voxnadalen located in Ovenåker, students studying events will also get to host a larger tournament as their end project for the third year. A few hours a week would be committed to eSports in the schedule.

"The school system must get better in general in educating people about the contemporary society and this is good evidence of that very fact", says Ibrahim Khalifa in a press message. Khalifa is Chairman of the Education and Employment Board in Sigtuna county, located in Stockholm. Magnus Alehed, principal of the school in Karlstad, tells Swedish media Aftonbladet how "there have been some frowning noses and some wondering why they get to play computer games during school hours, but we aim to kill the myth that it has to be a bad thing. Furthermore, it is about showing respect to this group of pupils."

eSports is growing in the world and it has always been a thing gaining lots of attention in Sweden, with the mainstream success of Dreamhack which has been gathering the youth of the region every six months for a quite a few years now. Furthermore, the national broadcasting company SVT has showed interest in the past, and the major media players such as Aftonbladet (biggest evening paper of the country), Telia (the largest Internet provider) and TV6 (one of the major TV companies) have also been stepping in lately to cover and support the growing industry.

Would you like to see eSports featured as a class in your city's schools? Will it provide a positive marketing experience for eSports?

Source: Aftonbladet [1] [2]