Inhabiting arguments: Roleplaying games in the classroom

Rebecca StantonITSI 2016

What is Reacting to the Past?

Reacting to the Past (RTTP) consists of elaborate games, set in the past, in which students are assigned roles informed by classic texts in the history of ideas. Class sessions are run entirely by students; instructors advise and guide students and grade their oral and written work. 

(http://reacting.barnard.edu/about)

What is Reacting to the Past?

Reacting to the Past (RTTP) consists of elaborate games, set in the past, in which students are assigned roles informed by classic texts in the history of ideas. Class sessions are run entirely by students; instructors advise and guide students and grade their oral and written work. 

(http://reacting.barnard.edu/about)

Three major ingredients:

• Game (decision point, controversy, crisis, debate, argument, rhetoric, strategy, liminality)

• History (research, understanding the past)• Text (interpreting a document, reading closely, “learning to look”)

Why RTTP?Intended outcomes:• Building arguments:– Logic– Rhetoric

• Giving students a real stake– Audience– Consequences

• Encouraging participation– Fun– Competition– Point of entry

Let’s try it:

The Master said, “There are, are there not, young plants that fail to produce blossoms, and blossoms that fail to produce fruit?”

 Confucius, Analects (Lun yü) IX.22 (trans. D.C. Lau)

Another example:As long as several men assembled together consider themselves as a single body, they have only one will which is directed towards their common preservation and general well-being. Then, all the animating forces of the state are vigorous and simple, and its principles are clear and luminous; it has no incompatible or conflicting interests; the common good makes itself so manifestly evident that only common sense is needed to discern it. . . . However, when the social tie begins to slacken and the state to weaken, when particular interests begin to make themselves felt and sectional societies begin to exert an influence over the greater society, the common interest then becomes corrupted and meets opposition, voting is no longer unanimous; the general will is no longer the will of all; contradictions and disputes arises, and even the best opinion is not allowed to prevail unchallenged. . . . For this reason the sensible rule for regulating public assemblies is one intended not so much to uphold the general will there, as to ensure that it is always questioned and always responds.

Rousseau, Of the Social Contract, IV.1 (trans Maurice Cranston)

Video!

• Rousseau, Burke, and Revolution in France, 1791: https://youtu.be/welSO3Ig8_c?t=209

 • Defining a Nation: India on the Eve of

Independence, 1945 https://youtu.be/_U6L9ERzw0U?t=81 

Unintended (good) outcomes

• Students embody multiplicity of interpretation• Students inhabit unfamiliar perspectives• Students pore over history• Students happily engage in small-group work• Students bond (for life?!)• Students experience frustration and adversity in ways that are not directly connected to their grade

Unintended (not so good) outcomes

• Students can get carried away by game elements and forget to anchor arguments in research and in text– Counter with:

• Responsible research• Information literacy

• Counterfactual outcomes– Counter with:

• Die rolls• Behind-scenes guidance• Postmortem

Grading (?!)