{"id":2027,"date":"2011-09-22T11:00:02","date_gmt":"2011-09-22T15:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/?p=2027"},"modified":"2019-11-19T15:43:18","modified_gmt":"2019-11-19T20:43:18","slug":"practomime-in-the-school-of-bioshock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/?p=2027","title":{"rendered":"Practomime in the school of BioShock"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my last<\/a> few<\/a> posts<\/a>, I\u2019ve argued that Plato\u2019s Republic<\/em> and Irrational Games\u2019 BioShock<\/em> present a challenge to culture, and, in particular, to the educational systems (read \u201cschool\u201d) that transmit that culture. Still more, I\u2019ve tried to show, do they present a challenge to those who are trying to harness the power of games to help students learn, whether we call that harnessing \u201cgamification\u201d or \u201cgame-based learning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Briefly, school tends to be a closed system, in which flawed notions of what it means to be a student, a citizen of one\u2019s community, and a person, are too easily transmitted, and in which critique of those notions is impossible. Only by seeing the system as a performance–a mimesis<\/em> or, to put it in other terms, a game–and by critiquing the rules of that performance, can we gain the skills and knowledge we need to bring about change in the system. Both Republic<\/em> and BioShock<\/em> force their players to enact their own enslavement by that system, as a way of inviting them to break the system and build something better.<\/p>\n

In this post, I begin to go into the nuts and bolts of how those of us who are designing what we call practomimetic curricula hope to do the same thing, even as we teach the same skills and knowledge that curricula in the old mimetic system teach. We believe that school has always been a game (even when people have forgotten that ludus<\/em> means both)–it\u2019s just that as it\u2019s currently conceived, it\u2019s a very bad game that conceals its ruleset in a pernicious way, attempting to make students forget, for example, that grades don\u2019t measure their actual worth.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll start with the most obvious mechanic of our practomimetic courses–their ARG\/RPG duality. Students in a practomimetic course, as we define the term, play as operatives who play as characters. At the start of each course, all the students in the class are recruited as part of a project to save civilization by reaching the learning objectives of the course. That\u2019s the ARG (Alternate-Reality Game) part.<\/p>\n

In order to save civilization by reaching those learning objectives, they must, as part of a team, play as a character in what we call a simulation, but which has a clearly-defined ludic ruleset. That\u2019s the RPG (Role-Playing Game) part.<\/p>\n

In this very simple set-up, there\u2019s a wealth of material for me to address in future posts, from a Cave\/BioShock<\/em> perspective (the collaborative nature of the RPG, the difference between the ARG and RPG rulesets, the power of mimesis<\/em> itself, etc.).<\/p>\n

For now, though, I want to point out only that forcing students to see themselves as on the mission they are actually on<\/strong>–the mission to learn, in order that they can contribute to the saving of civilization by the communities they will join when they reach the appropriate stages of their lives–breaks school in a way that we consider revolutionary, and crucial.<\/p>\n

When a student sees him or herself on a mission to save civilization by learning, say, Latin, at first an enormous cognitive dissonance arises. \u201cWait a second. Is this idiot actually trying to tell me that school is useful<\/strong>? That Latin<\/strong> can save civilization? I\u2019m not here to save the world! I\u2019m here to get a grade so I can get the Hell out of here!\u201d<\/p>\n

Then comes the frustration, especially among the best students. \u201cWhy won\u2019t this guy tell me what I have to do to get an A? I don\u2019t want to hear about how I\u2019m on a mission to save civilization, or that my learning matters<\/strong>! I want my A dammit!\u201d<\/p>\n

Some students–some wonderful students, under the old model–drop at that point. The ones who don\u2019t, in my experience, universally undergo a transformation in their ideas about learning. Suddenly, they begin to take charge of deciding what they\u2019re going to learn in order to get to the next stage of the RPG. That\u2019s what I\u2019ll talk about in my next post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my last few posts, I\u2019ve argued that Plato\u2019s Republic and Irrational Games\u2019 BioShock present a challenge to culture, and, in particular, to the educational systems (read \u201cschool\u201d) that transmit that culture. Still more, I\u2019ve tried to show, do they present a challenge to those who are trying to harnessContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"coauthors":[206],"class_list":["entry","author-travis","post-2027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-articles"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2027"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6593,"href":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2027\/revisions\/6593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2027"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=2027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}