Seriously? Pretty dumb poll, escapist. What the hell is a schoolkid supposed to learn from playing Fallout, GTA, or Mario, besides how to, uh, play the game? And Braid is only a notch better, cuz, it's like, artsy and stuff, but it'd still be a stretch to argue it had any educational value. Methinks you should reword the poll: "Hey, average teenage member of the Escapist. You're in school, and I bet you'd rather play video games all day. So which one of these four would you prefer?"
People have mentioned Portal and Civ, and that's about the best of it so far, but I don't think they quite cut it. Maybe play Portal for a half-hour just to demonstrate some physics properties/problem-solving, but kids are gonna get a lot more out of their actual textbooks/lectures/what have you. Civ could be useful to help remember historical names and developments, but on its own it's just a jumble of crap, all out of order. The Americans founded Islam in 80 BC, and the Indians used their Fast Workers to chop down a buncha forests and build the Temple of Athena! The strategy side of things is kinda pointless for mainstream curriculum, so what's left?
One poster mentioned Little Big Planet. MAYBE that would work, if you focused on the "create" side of it and used it for an elective intro-to-game-design sorta class. But of course, you could just teach good old fashioned coding instead.
I played a few computer games in my math and science classes in highschool. They were pretty basic, just little illustrations of principles of geometry and whatnot. Made sense. Kinda helped "make learning fun". I think we'd best leave it at that when it comes to "games in schools". Jeez, GTA, really? I look at those poll options and the various responses, and y'all are seriously a buncha jokers. If you're not joking, then ya oughtta be ashamed.
(Tho Typing of the Dead would be pretty cool, I guess.) *shrug*
