She summarized,
"I lost my mentors, and in their place I gained role models."
...
It doesn't sound to me like a value judgment in favor of one or the other. Others may read it differently.
Showing posts with label role-play. Show all posts
Showing posts with label role-play. Show all posts
Demographics
Someone recently quoted to me an insightful comment by a teenage girl. She had been asked to describe her transition from attending a cozy small-town high school to attending a much larger high school in a larger community.
"Where is the next Torah frontier?"
From an article by Rabbi Feigenbaum of Toronto; the full article is here.
A student once exclaimed to me, “I wish I would have been alive during the Holocaust – I could have been a hero and someone would have written a book about me. Now I am just another good girl who does chesed.” Everyone wants to move up a step, improve on the past, and feel they have conquered new heights and done something for the greater good. But what is left today? Taliesim will never slip again, no one is forced to work on Shabbos, everything is kosher, and chesed is institutionalized. Where is the next Torah frontier to conquer?
The easiest way to get that feeling of growth is to focus on the external – anything you can do I can do stricter, and the school with the most rules wins. Why? Because internal growth is hard to measure and, for societal reasons, frum people are not comfortable talking about “connections to Hashem” and “spiritual growth.”
A student once exclaimed to me, “I wish I would have been alive during the Holocaust – I could have been a hero and someone would have written a book about me. Now I am just another good girl who does chesed.” Everyone wants to move up a step, improve on the past, and feel they have conquered new heights and done something for the greater good. But what is left today? Taliesim will never slip again, no one is forced to work on Shabbos, everything is kosher, and chesed is institutionalized. Where is the next Torah frontier to conquer?
The easiest way to get that feeling of growth is to focus on the external – anything you can do I can do stricter, and the school with the most rules wins. Why? Because internal growth is hard to measure and, for societal reasons, frum people are not comfortable talking about “connections to Hashem” and “spiritual growth.”
"The Batman Effect"
Someone - I've now forgotten who; sorry - directed my attention to this article:
The Batman Effect
The gist of the study is that a child who thinks of himself as Batman, and stops periodically to ask himself "How is Batman doing?" will be able to persevere longer in a dull task than a child who approaches the job as himself.
(The article doesn't mention whether a control study was done in which the children were instructed to think of themselves as Batman, but were not given costumes. I'd be curious to see such a study -- I suspect the costumes are superfluous.)
Anyway, why does it work?
Is it because, as the article proposes, that when a child thinks of himself as Batman, he distances himself from the situation?
My first thought was that when a child sees himself as Batman, he identifies with a clearly defined character to emulate. The question "What would Batman do?" lies before him, and he probably envisions the answer vividly. He knows exactly what to do.
I keep coming back to the idea that children need bedtime stories, so that they will have heroes, for this reason.
The Batman Effect
The gist of the study is that a child who thinks of himself as Batman, and stops periodically to ask himself "How is Batman doing?" will be able to persevere longer in a dull task than a child who approaches the job as himself.
(The article doesn't mention whether a control study was done in which the children were instructed to think of themselves as Batman, but were not given costumes. I'd be curious to see such a study -- I suspect the costumes are superfluous.)
Anyway, why does it work?
Is it because, as the article proposes, that when a child thinks of himself as Batman, he distances himself from the situation?
My first thought was that when a child sees himself as Batman, he identifies with a clearly defined character to emulate. The question "What would Batman do?" lies before him, and he probably envisions the answer vividly. He knows exactly what to do.
I keep coming back to the idea that children need bedtime stories, so that they will have heroes, for this reason.
Learning Everything through LARP
LARP stands for Live-Action Role Play. It's a hobby. To LARP, you dress up in costume and go out with your friends to a big, open space and act out whatever story you have in mind. LARPing may follow a script, or be an improvisation that starts with a couple of givens (e.g., the year, the place, and a quest).
(There are various solutions to the problem of how to LARP combat. Some people learn actual combat skills; some use foam weapons; some halt the drama at its climax for a game of rock-paper-scissors.)
There's also a school in Denmark (I gather that it serves to fill in a sort of European gap year) that teaches all its subjects through LARP.
Here's the school's website:
Østerskov Efterskole
Q. Do you lose something when you teach a subject in a different subject's framework instead of organizing it according to its own internal logic (e.g., teaching whatever math happens to fit with the LARP scenario)?
Q. Or do you gain something?
I'm intrigued by the relationship in this educational model between what the teachers put together and what the students furnish themselves. It's a very teacher-determined course of study. Somehow, it doesn't feel like one.
I've also been trying to figure out where LARP might serve in the Judaics department. It has obvious applications in halacha l'maaseh, since that's all about understanding what to do in situations as they arise. I think it would be great to teach students halacha and then send them into a series of scenarios to test their knowledge.
But in, say, Navi class... I'm still thinking about it.
(There are various solutions to the problem of how to LARP combat. Some people learn actual combat skills; some use foam weapons; some halt the drama at its climax for a game of rock-paper-scissors.)
There's also a school in Denmark (I gather that it serves to fill in a sort of European gap year) that teaches all its subjects through LARP.
Here's the school's website:
Østerskov Efterskole
Q. Do you lose something when you teach a subject in a different subject's framework instead of organizing it according to its own internal logic (e.g., teaching whatever math happens to fit with the LARP scenario)?
Q. Or do you gain something?
I'm intrigued by the relationship in this educational model between what the teachers put together and what the students furnish themselves. It's a very teacher-determined course of study. Somehow, it doesn't feel like one.
I've also been trying to figure out where LARP might serve in the Judaics department. It has obvious applications in halacha l'maaseh, since that's all about understanding what to do in situations as they arise. I think it would be great to teach students halacha and then send them into a series of scenarios to test their knowledge.
But in, say, Navi class... I'm still thinking about it.
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