Portal Emphasizes Critical Thinking, a Skill That is Ignored By Many School Systems

Surprisingly, critical thinking is a skill that often goes by the wayside in many school systems, leaving students to forge for themselves when other subjects call for this ability to be utilized. The reason for this oversight is often debated, with The Guardian claiming in a 2012 article that the reason stemmed from the fact that schools are businesses and Universities do not care about critical thinking.

Source: https://www.preining.info/blog/
wp-content/uploads/2015/06/portal-ex.jpg

Oddly enough, while critical thinking is not part of many school curricula both in the United States and abroad, a certain video game is picking up the slack. Portal is a critically acclaimed first person puzzle solving game that was released by Valve in 2008. Along with proving to be incredibly popular even seven years after its initial release, Portal boasts an impressive ninety out of one hundred aggregate score on Metacritic, a widely trusted service that combines critic reviews from reliable, established sources to form a numerical score between zero and one hundred.

Source: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/CLUy9DH7V2M/
maxresdefault.jpg

While Portal has been widely recognized as a fantastic game, what is really intriguing about it is its ability to teach critical thinking skills to its players, especially those of a young age. The basic premise of Portal is to shoot "portals" into solid surfaces in order to move around, one blue and the other orange. For example, a player would shoot a blue "entry portal" into a wall and an orange "exit portal" into the ceiling. If the player were to direct their character to travel through the orange portal, they would fall through the blue portal in the ceiling. Using this strategy, players are expected to fire portals into different locations throughout a given map in order to move themselves as well as solid objects, like boxes, to complete tasks and complete stages of the game. It takes an incredible amount of concentration and critical thinking skills to complete even some of the easier stages, forcing players to exercise their critical thinking muscles in order to progress throughout the game.


While playing video games may seem pointless to many individuals, especially those among the older demographic, Portal proves that games can have substantial value in addition to providing entertainment. The complexity of the gameplay forces players to think outside of the box and accept that their desired solution may not be so black and white. In an environment where students are often taught that every answer to the questions that they are asked can be found by using a formula, it is refreshing to see a game that forces players to think critically to reach a viable solution.

Works Cited

Morse, B. (2012, September 12). Why critical thinking is overlooked by schools and shunned by
          students. The Guardian. Retrieved from: http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-                                     network/2012/sep/12/critical-thinking-overlooked-in-secondary-education