College Professors Drop Slavery Role-Playing Lesson Over Conper erns It Upsets
Categories: US Education News
StudentsThe directors of a role-playing game that requires students to debate slavery pulled it from print recently after college students and professors complained that advocating for, or listening to, the views of white supremacists made them uncomfortable.The move has sparked debate among historians, and some professors who use the lesson plan said withdrawing the game infringes on academic freedom and teaching about race in America. Nationwide, schools from kindergartens to colleges are scrutinizing materials resulting in an increase in book bans at public schools and a series of protests preventing controversial figures from speaking on campuses. The game is one of 30 historic debates in a series called Reacting to the Past. College students at about 500 colleges and universities spend weeks reading about different historical events. They include the debate in Athens over democracy in 403 B.C.E. and the 17th century trial of Galileo.Students assume a character from a selected period and play a game that falls somewhere between Dungeons and Dragons and Model United Nations. The scenario is staged, a game master directs the debate but students script their own arguments, build their own coalitions and forge their own compromises. The game is effective because it requires empathy to succeed, said Mark Thompson, who uses the game in his introduction to rhetoric class at California State University at Stanislaus. The shift in perspective helps students understand how others can hold vastly different beliefs because they are products of their time and context.Reacting to the Past was created almost 30 years ago by Barnard College professor Mark Carnes as a way to energize his classroom. The game has spread beyond colleges to universities in Europe and Japan, senior centers and prisons. Some high schools are now picking it up. The Frederick Douglass game, which has as many as 75 characters, including women’s right activist and abolitionist Sojourner Truth and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, sells around 1,000 copies a year, making it a bestseller among the series, Dr. Proctor said.To ameliorate any discomfort students feel from championing racist characters, Hilary Green, a history professor at the University of Alabama, has her students wear nametags to remind classmates they are in character.He said he was initially a little uncomfortable insulting his classmates but likes the game because he thinks it forces students to think about points of view that they may not have previously considered and with which they don’t agree.