"Academic Distain for Wargaming" Topic

"Academic disdain for using wargaming as a tool is a classic example of legacy skills being allowed to override innovation in the academic world. This attitude also explains the near complete absence of academics from professional wargaming; one would expect that military historians would be embedded in professional wargaming, bringing their extensive knowledge to bear. As I wander around the strange world professional wargaming I do not encounter many academic historians, especially after Phil Sabin went to South America.

Stating the obvious, the military and supporting civilian services use wargames for training, education, force development, and practising war fighting. The computer industry uses cyber wargames continually to test business continuity. Education uses games as there is a huge track record of application and value. Emergency planning uses exercises; these use many of the techniques from wargaming. Many disciplines use the tools of wargaming and would think anyone challenging their professional use to be very strange indeed. There are parallels in other disciplines where new tools have been resisted by academics for decades…"

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Armand

Compared to 22 windbags kiking a bag of wind about and calling it a hobby, makes me realise that I have no appologies or concerenS about folk calling my hobby "stRange".

My experience is that many (not all) achedemics are unfit and impractials, Professional wargaming (like say an excersize of a sfaty drill), is practical and vitaly useful. But to many achedemics this means coming out of the Library and maybe not having a good dinner that day. Well that is certainly not proper achedemics.

However we must be aware there are at least in the UK, saner types, we have historians that have those skills, but I guess to make the "Manstream Slakers" feel better they call themselves experimental acrchiologists. Many vital new insights have come frome these guy's.

I sympathize with the academics. Change is unsettling and a day in the library stacks followed by a good meal is more relevant to many individuals than being useful to the "real" world.

As a professor and with multiple degrees, I learned early on that the key to expanding knowledge is individual research.
For example, I learned more about Napoleonic era history doing research on painting uniforms than I ever learned in the course on Napoleonic Europe.

There is an academic dislike for gaming. The level or intensity depends on the school.

Thanks

Armand

Academics don't like people who know more than they do.

Wolfhag

Wolfhag, very true.

A friend of mine, who was not a wargamer but a reenactor and had read much military history, took a teacher training course as a mature student. On one occasion they were listening to a lecture on the English Civil Wars and the speaker said that one of the advantages Parliament enjoyed at the start of the war was control of the Tower of London with its stock of cannon, muskets "and bayonets".

When the lecture was over, the speaker invited questions and comments. My friend pointed out politely that bayonets had not been invented and were not used in the ECW.

The lecturer's response? "I'm interested in History, NOT things!"

We have to be realistic. Wargaming is *not* an activity possessed of academic rigour. An academic cannot publish a theory because it worked on the wargames table. Even as a counterfactual historical exercise, wargaming is pretty undisciplined.

That said, I do think a lot of academics would benefit from doing it – it really helps you focus on the practical in the same way that "living history" exercises do. However, most academics care first and foremost about getting published (which is, after all, the way they build their careers) and wargaming will not help with that.

The ones who impress me are people like Brent Nosworthy who manage to combine the detailed sensibilities of wargamers with the rigour of academics.