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Playdate: Going back to school with 'No Pineapple Left Behind'
Back to school. Those three words can strike fear in even the hardiest of kids. We're celebrating the beginning of the semester a little differently, because, well, that's what we do on Playdate. Rather than spend the afternoon quoting Billy Madison, we're going to be playing through No PIneapple Left Behind, a game that skewers the politics of the American education system. And who better to talk about it than Seth Alter, the former teacher who developed the game? No one, that's who. So join us here at 6 pm ET / 3 pm PT as Sean Buckley and myself walk through these pineapple-filled halls for two hours on Twitch. You can tune in here on this post, Twitch.tv/joystiq or even the Engadget Gaming homepage. And no, there's no need to bring an apple for us -- just being a good sport in chat is reward enough.
'No Pineapple Left Behind' and the politics of American education
Seth Alter was a teacher for all of six months before quitting his job and going indie to make video games full-time. No Pineapple Left Behind, his second PC title, is more or less the story of why he left his students at a Boston charter school. As a special education math teacher, his sixth graders were expected to meet the same behavioral standards and educational expectations as their mainstreamed counterparts thanks to 2001's controversial No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which ties school funding to standardized test scores. Alter says that teacher evaluations are drawn from those scores as well. And because most charter schools are non-union, they can fire teachers for almost any reason, including low test scores from special-needs students who should have been held to modified standards in the first place. It doesn't take a genius to realize just how flawed that logic is: It's a system built to fail.
