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Reacting makes history alive—and different

An educational game replays history--even the endings.

Last weekend, professors and graduate students from across the southeast traveled both to the 1860s and 44 BC, rubbing elbows with colleagues of Charles Darwin and the assassins of Julius Caesar.

 No time machine necessary—just a trip to the University of Georgia’s Student Learning Center for the “Reacting to the Past” conference.

 Reacting, created in the late 1990s at Barnard College, is a style of instruction that has students take part in a structured four-week game based on a historical moment of conflict. Lightly guided by a game-master, the students are randomly assigned roles of both real and fictional figures of the time and given a series of objectives. Staying in character, they must write and give speeches about the issues of the day, all the while trying to achieve their goals and prevent others from doing the same.

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 The point of reacting is “to engage in the intellectual ideas of the day,” says Naomi Norman, department head of classics at UGA and an organizer of the conference. But so much more than that happens in the game.

 Today, 40 colleges and universities have included this instruction, including UGA, which started with a two-year reacting pilot program in 2003 but now has reacting featured in 12 courses in nine departments—classics, comparative literature, English, history, physics and astronomy, political science, religion, speech communication and women’s studies.

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 UGA professors have created their own reacting games—Keith Dix, associate professor of classics, wrote “Beware the Ides of March: Rome in 44 BCE,” which played at the conference; Michael Winship, professor of history, wrote one about puritan Anne Hutchinson; and Barbara McCaskill, associate professor of English, is currently working on a reacting game that focuses on the 1961 desegregation of UGA.

 At this point, you might think reacting isn’t much different from play-acting, or maybe a bout of Dungeons & Dragons (there’s a game-master, after all). But there’s a twist to reacting: rarely do the games follow the actual historical events. You never know how a reacting game might end.

 “We tend to teach history in a very linear way, giving students the impression that this can only happen one way,” says Norman. “(Reacting) helps students understand history is not a linear argument of, ‘everything had to happen exactly this way, it was inevitable.’”

 Students learn that happenstance and minor characters can determine the course of history. They have to take on roles that espouse philosophies vastly different than their own, encouraging them to be more empathetic, putting aside biases and understanding a variety of new perspectives, says Norman. Shy students feel more empowered to speak up in class. Students must know texts intimately in order to use them for their own design to win the game.

 “It’s very interdisciplinary,” says Norman. “It’s very active learning. Too often, students sit there as passive consumers of knowledge.”

 As active learners, the students are more invested, notes Norman. Students “get very deep into their characters,” she says. “There are kids who start coming to class in costume. They get so vested in the game that they attend class every time.” And because they don’t want to miss any votes lest their faction lose the game, absenteeism is nearly non-existent.

 Plus, you never know what will happen.

 “I’ve played (the game) five times, and it’s never ended the same,” says Sharon McCoy, the game-master of the conference’s session of “Charles Darwin, the Copley Medal, and the Rise of Naturalism, 1862-1864.”

 Indeed, the Saturday morning Darwin game is full of passionate arguments and even witty barbs.

 More than once, Thomas Henry Huxley (as embodied by Thomas Hagood, a UGA graduate student) makes impassioned speeches only to be reminded by Sir Edward, General Sabine (Montgomery Wolf, a history lecturer at UGA), “The chair has not recognized Huxley.”

 The Anglican bishop, the Most Reverend St. John Waterstone (Bonnie Cramond, professor of gifted and creative education at UGA), sees Huxley’s behavior as insulting: “I don’t believe dogs are allowed in our chamber!”

 Huxley, exasperated: “Undermining speculation is a direct threat to science!”

 The bishop: “I find this barking disruptive!”

 Huxley: “I apologize to your holy ears.”

 “He is right,” says Hooker (Sharon E. Mozley-Standridge, assistant professor of biology at Middle Georgia College), referring to Huxley. “Science is not just induction anymore. Even Newton’s work is somewhat speculative—” this prompts a gasp from the bishop—“We know that he was working from a hypothetical framework.”

 It’s time to vote on a resolution. Francis G.R. Wollaston, natural philosopher (Nelson Hilton, director of UGA’s Center for Teaching and Learning), hands out copies of the resolution, which reads, in part: “…the increasing practice of speculation threatens to undermine our goal, enshrined in the motto that dates from our foundation, ‘Nullius in Verba (‘on the word of no one’)…Therefore, let it be resolved that this Council of the Royal Society affirms that its purpose…is best accomplished through induction and the establishment of progressives states of certainty.”

 The resolution “denies our own humanity!” Huxley shouts. “Is it not human nature to speculate?”

 “The floor does not recognize Mr. Huxley!” says Sir Edward, General Sabine.

 “I sincerely apologize,” says Huxley, sarcastically. “Please pray for me.”

 They vote. The Ayes have it.

 The professors and graduate students take a break. They pull out guidebooks, iPads and laptops and chat amiably, remaining at least partly in character, earnestly discussing strategy, still completely focused on the game.

 After the break, Huxley and Hooker present the fruit of their quick labor: an amendment to the resolution. Adopting some modern technology for the moment, they project it onto the wall. Their modification reads thus: “Whereas, induction is perceived as the best practice for science by our society—based on the work of past inductionists, including Sir Isaac Newton—induction includes hypothesis as a valid and reasonable practice. Therefore, we resolve this council of the Royal Society to affirm the inclusion of hypothesis as a valid and reasonable practice for determining the truths of nature.”

“My question, simply, is: what is hypothesis?” asks Wollaston.

 “Hypothesis is a speculation, yes, but based on observation, which is also part of induction…it has a valid basis in what we know to be true,” says Hooker.

Wollaston suggests changing the amendment so it reads that hypothesis is “a sometimes and occasionally valid and reasonable practice.”

 “In my excellent education at Oxford, I was also given to reading fiction,” the bishop declares. “However, we read fiction in fiction classes, not in science classes…my concern is putting speculation as truth.”

A few minutes later, flustered by yet more ribbing from Huxley, the bishop attempts to detour the conversation into accusations of a possibly history of mental illness in Huxley’s family.

 “If we can move pass the pounding brass and tinkling cymbal of our good bishop,” Huxley says.

 Hooker again attempts to smooth things over, and in the end, the modified resolution passes with more Yays than Nays.

 Another hurdle passed, discussion turns to Darwin’s thought son the Archaeopteryx, inspiring fresh debate. After the conference, these professors and graduate students will bring what they’ve learned from reacting their own classrooms, where yet more students will likely “gain the added benefit looking at historical issues from a whole new perspective,” says Norman.

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