"Introducing Miniature Wargaming to the Younger Generation" Topic

My most recent blog, "Introducing Miniature Wargaming to the Younger Generation" is on line at my blog Ramblings of a Military Historian.

johnmpriest.blogspot.com

Really enjoyed your blog post.

I agree its super important for early opportunities to be creative and play around with things, you seem to understand young minds well that way.

I also agree giving high school and junior high school students opportunities through different items such as history. Maker spaces, and project based learning is much more open to those activities these days.

The trick is getting beyond the essential curriculum, the core curriculum, and the daily "objections" [objectives]. Some districts or counties will not like the "wargaming" aspects of it and would probably prefer "historical simulations" instead.

The students, for the most part, enjoyed the activities involved with the games. I would personally use unpainted plastic figures. I had a student who ate one of the pieces.

The trick to gaining acceptance for wargaming and simulations is to answer the learning 'so what?' If simulations are vaulable learning experiences, then there has to be some 'academically' acceptable methods for establishing that.

Learning involves 'Memory/retention' of information, understanding the information and using the information.

The problem with simulations is that they are fundamentally an exercise in understanding, whether the dynamics of the battlefield or other historical events or social dynamics. If you allow students to experiment with the information, really become obsorbed in the activity, that last thing you want to do is tell them they will be graded on 'how well they do.'

That is a test, using the information, regurgitating information…it isn't a 'learning activity', but a proof of learning.

So, there has to be subsequent 'tests' or proofs of learning that demonstrate what the simulation has achieved.

Current educational practices, when I retired in 2011. January 1, was that students were not to memorize, which is just plain wrong. Nothing in means nothing out. I always followed up with the students writing afteraction reports describing what happened in the engagement, which they based upon actual reports. I also allowed them to execute different maneuvers if
there was an historical precedent for them.

I also let them explain why they maneuvered like they did and we discussed what they observed about their own conduct of the action . Very often, they repeated the same mistakes the participants did while forgetting about the objective of the game to begin with.

The most important outcomes centered around the questions and discussion the game generated.

Yes, that debriefing is necessary for any simulation/game experience. They are the most important outcomes, but again, not something that should be graded for 'quality' or accuracy.

Not to memorize, huh? Very, very strange. I'd love to see what educational research THAT was based on…

I had a principal at a faculty meeting tell us kids did not have to memorize the times tables because we had calculators and we could teach history without teaching facts. We only had to teach the conclusions.

Oyi! Sorry to hear that.

You don't have to understand how one got to those conclusions [which they probably had to memorize], just know the conclusions.

Critical thinking at its worst.