I've spent a lot of time thinking about this. I had a fairly blasé education that involved switching schools a lot. Looking back, I can see that most of the information recall I have came from video games. The Civilization series taught me history, math science and logic came from the Dr. Brain series and a hodgepodge of other games, time and resource management came from Sim City and real-time strategy games, and more formal and specific subjects from Khan Academy.

The problem here is one of reward. I loved the challenge inherent with Dr. Brain; the puzzles did a great job at teaching basics of chemistry, biology, math, and I was actually accomplishing goals I was interested in. I think that the disconnect it that the people making these purchasing decisions do not remember what motivates children, what goals they are interested in achieving.