Gaming Anti-Colonialism in the Classroom
As I was browsing Board Game Geek I stumbled upon a forum where a user asked for anticolonial board games to play in a high school world history classroom. The list intrigued me as a gamer and a historian, of course, and I was disappointed to see that the list was relatively short. It seems to me that there are three main reasons for this:
Complexity and length. It seemed to me that people had forgotten the original poster’s question, or had never been teachers, because almost every answer was hopelessly long and complex to introduce in a classroom setting. Yes, colonial struggles are complex, but the median game is not something high schoolers could reasonably pick up even if they spent the whole class learning the rules. And while I like turning people into gamers, the focus needs to be more on the learning outcomes than the game itself.
Selection. In the forum, users responded with a relatively small number of games. From what I’ve read and played, most of them seem like quality games and examples, but games with colonial themes are sparse compared to the board gaming hobby (and even the wargaming hobby).
Curriculum. I can’t speak (write) to this all that specifically (yet), but I suspect the era of (de)colonization is understudied in U.S. history classrooms. One wrong but easy claim to make is that liberation efforts across Africa and Asia weren’t the Americans’ problem, but the country’s Cold War lens alone counters this point.
Speaking of the Cold War, I read another post where a teacher played a modified game of Twilight Struggle with a group of sixth graders, which gives me hope that maybe a deeper strategy game could work in a classroom if done right. Games are such unique portals into the past and it’s a huge shame that they don’t hold a more prominent position in history education circles. If militaries see them as valuable enough to warrant millions of dollars of resources, why don’t schools?
As always, thanks for reading. I was excited to see that Haverford’s communications department wrote an article about my summer work on Road to March, which you can check out here.
Happy gaming,
Matt
You know by now this is typical of most BGG threads:
OP asks a question (in good or bad faith).
A series of answers that are variously:
- lengthy but irrelevant;
- quibbling with the irrelevant answers at either much greater or much shorter length;
- one-liners that are irrelevant in completely different ways;
- abusive of or condescending towards the OP for their ignorance and temerity in asking a question;
- pleas for order and civility; and
- something actually useful to the OP.
In that thread there are 2 items that are useful: Dog Eat Dog and First Nations of Catan.
Blog post I did on this a while back:
https://brtrain.wordpress.com/2022/05/23/indigenous-counterpoints-to-colonial-themes-in-board-games/
Occasionally someone tries to create something along these lines, but like most commercial games (regardless of subject) they don't really go anywhere.
The Mary Flanagan book was rather a disappointment, especially after reading other things by her.
Maurice Suckling's new book has a chapter devoted to the problem:
https://www.routledge.com/Paper-Time-Machines-Critical-Game-Design-and-Historical-Board-Games/Suckling/p/book/9781032416915#
And one more link, though you might know of them already: Play the Past.
https://www.playthepast.org/
Too much about video games in there but it's the world we live in, I suppose... there is some about analog board games though.