Course Profile: Democratic Labors in Athens and America

By Colleen Cable

A toga is not the usual classroom attire. In Professor Brett Rogers’s new class, however, dressing in costume is not only encouraged, but required.

The class, Democratic Labors in Athens and America, “combin[es] role playing and history,” said Rogers. Over the course of the semester, the students will participate in two simulations or “games” that correlate to their readings in the class.

The class will study “two democracies at arguably fairly turbulent times,” Rogers said. The two democracies studied are 403 BCE Athens and 1913 Greenwich Village, both of which were time periods that faced many challenges to democracy.

The class is structured that there is about three weeks of reading historical texts and then three weeks of playing the game.

A game is based on both of these time periods where students are assigned roles and then must portray that role through costume, drama, and historical accuracy. Each role has a series of objectives the student must try to meet throughout the course of the game. Depending on how the game goes, history can change within the simulation.

“People read stuff but don’t really get what’s going on,” said Rogers. If a student is able to “play through a position,” it might change the way he or she thinks about the text, he said.

A central element to the class is student involvement and direction. “The class is completely and totally student driven,” said student Alex Skufca.

Only three weeks into the course, said Rogers, the students “don’t talk to me, they talk to each other.”

” Professor Rogers only interjects to clarify historical points or add something to our understanding of the text. For example when class discussion brought up the classic nature versus nurture, Rogers explained the Greek origins of that agreement,” Skufca said.

The fact that the class is able to run things on their own already may be credit to the “shockingly unique group of people” in the class, said Rogers.

He said this group is the most excited and motivated group of students that he has seen in a while.

The students also seem to enjoy the atmosphere in the classroom.

“I realized that everyone in the class cared just as much as I did [about] what Socrates was saying,” said Skufca.

This camaraderie among the students in the class will hopefully transfer over to the games. Although the game will not start for another one or two weeks, students are already excited about participating in the simulation.

“I am planning on going as far as I reasonably can [in the simulation]. The major obstacle is simply finding the costumes and props, not working up any desire to wear them. I have that in spades,” said student Ryan Tunkel.

Because the game operates on a points system, people who do not dress up will not do as well in the class. Likewise, if a player does not meet his or her objectives, their score will be markedly lower than other players.

The class model is based on the book series, “Reacting to the Past,” which was created at Barnard College. A professor at Barnard discovered that his students could understand and interpret the text better if they acted it out and so he decided to pursue the idea.

In order to start this class at Gettysburg, Rogers received a grant from the Johnson Center for Creative Teaching. The Johnson Center grants loans in order for students and teachers to pursue experiential and collaborative education. The hope of the Johnson Center, Rogers said, is to discover methods of teaching or learning that can be continued. Rogers hopes that if this semester works out, the class will be offered again, although “no two classes turn out the same.”

In addition to getting the grant, Rogers has gone to different lengths to make the class the best it can be. Because he specializes in classics, he felt comfortable teaching the section of the course on Athens, but needed to learn more about Greenwich Village in the early twentieth century. Therefore Rogers spent part of his summer in Greenwich Village getting the feel and historical basis for that section of the class.

Even though the class is designed to be student run, there is still a lot of preparation to be done on his part, Rogers said.

“You can tell that Brett has put a lot of work into making this course and it is going to be very exciting and something truly different to a normal learning experience,” said student Amy Shinko.

“This is your education to take charge of,” said Rogers.