The Basic Concept
In most classes students learn by receiving ideas and information from instructors and texts, or they discuss such materials in seminars. “Reacting to the Past” courses employ a different pedagogy. Students learn by taking on roles, informed by classic texts, in elaborate games set in the past; they learn skills—speaking, writing, critical thinking, problem solving, leadership, and teamwork—in order to prevail in difficult and complicated situations. That is because Reacting roles, unlike those in a play, do not have a fixed script and outcome. While students will be obliged to adhere to the philosophical and intellectual beliefs of the historical figures they have been assigned to play, they must devise their own means of expressing those ideas persuasively, in papers, speeches or other public presentations; and students must also pursue a course of action they think will help them win the game.
Sometimes students chafe at the notion of playing games in college. The idea of “reacting” to the past may bring to mind the Thanksgiving pageant of grade school, when one dressed up like Squanto and Miles Standish. But that experience has as much relation to Reacting as Tic-Tac-Toe does to chess, or arithmetic to calculus. A Reacting game is among the greatest challenges many students experience in college.
Reacting is also fun: it is designed explicitly as a game, and amusing things will happen. But many games have a serious side: few players laugh their way through a football game. Sometimes Reacting games similarly acquire heart-pounding tension in the final sessions. Any game is enjoyable if one plays it well, but this nearly always requires hard work.
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