This paper’s central problem is the possibility of inherently pedagogical media, as well as critique of inherently anti-pedagogical characteristics of (certain) media. We’ll approach this problem firstly by short deduction of the theoretical outlook of pedagogy seen primarily as a science made possible by the dialectics of classical ideas of Bildsamkeit and Bildung. In this context and in regard to systematic construction of pedagogy made by J. F. Herbart, we see pedagogical purpose as developing interest understood as inter-esse in its subject-object dialectics and developing the circle of thought (Herbart, 1987). Seen in this way, pedagogy is not concerned with mere acquiring of skills and competences. From this outlook, we’ll try to pedagogically ask about the essence of media. Media in themselves, not as content-in-media, can be seen as exteriorized circles of thought and we’ll try to demonstrate this by showing that what Marshall McLuhan meant by ‘medium is the message’ as the credo of media analysis is akin to saying that the essence of a particular medium is a particular exteriorized circle of thought. Media and what they in themselves structurally render as (im)possible are at the same time very similar to particular kinds of language games (Wittgenstein, 2000) or discursive formations (Foucault, 2002). If we add to this that media have a tendency to function in a hegemonic way both through the dominant way in which they arrange relations of senses which produce specific kinds of mind (McLuhan, 2002), and through their aestheticized, spectacle-producing alienation (Debord, 1994), then in sum, when dealing with media we’re dealing with hegemonic and specifically exteriorized, aestheticized, possibly reduced, alienated and alienating discourses/circles of thought. If that is so, it is pedagogically necessary to try an analysis and critique of media as hegemonic discourses that disable what is essentially pedagogical self-forming of subject’s circle of thought, which is crucial for central pedagogical idea of Bildung. In this context, media can also clearly be seen as a productive force of spectacle (Debord, 1994), as well as of that which is hyper-real (Baudrillard, 1994), in other word, as a new form of alienation that’s not only more total than classical Marx’s idea of alienation, but also more total than Horkheimer and Adorno’s idea of culture industry (Adorno, 1992). Following these considerations, on the other hand we’ll ask the question of the possibility of truly pedagogical media and try to see if commercial computer games are absolutely electrical, highly cold (McLuhan, 2002), open-ended, truly practical and in those characteristics possibly highly pedagogical medium. Specific analysis and possibility of construction of computer games as an inherently pedagogical medium will be tried through looking at their discursive character and kinds of (pedagogical) practices inherent to them (Gee, 2007, 2013, 2014).

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