Warning! Mimesis might occur

In our final official department faculty meeting of the semester, we went around the room sharing pedagogical and active learning approaches we had been trying out in our classes. It was both fun and inspiring to hear what others were doing. Two incidents reported by my colleagues jumped out at me. (1) A CRISPR debate in Biochem. (2) Using scratch-cards for group “quizzes” in a G-Chem lab. These two cases particularly resonated with the many examples that Mark Carnes provided in his book Minds on Fire (reviewed in this earlier blog post).

For the CRISPR debate, the class (Biochem II) considered two issues. Half the class debated the first issue: Should the human genome be edited using CRISPR technology? The other half debated CRISPR patent and intellectual property rights. My colleague set up the class in the format of a formal debate and the students were assigned specific roles (initial presentation, rebuttal, summary, etc). The structure of the debate was clearly laid out with strict time limits, and there were external judges (scientists and faculty members) present. The students represented individuals or organizations involved in the debate (that they had read about).

Like the Reacting role-playing immersion games described by Carnes, even though this was just a single session (with preparation ahead of time), the students took on their assigned roles with enthusiasm. Students from whom nary a squeak was heard all semester long voiced their opinions and arguments passionately. Some continued to debate the issue after class time was over. And they dug into researching the question! The motivation to “win” (this came up in Carnes’ many interviews with former students), and not be “clueless” in front of class, were apparent even in a single activity. I think the students might have even surprised themselves!

In the scratch-card example (G-Chem II Lab), another colleague was experimenting with team-based learning approaches that have students take a multiple-choice quiz individually and then repeat the quiz in small groups. The questions and multiple choice answers must be carefully chosen to potentially elicit different responses depending on common errors students might make. The group must come to a consensus answer. When done well, this activity can elicit good discussion and help students articulate and clarify what they think they know. (I’ve seen many examples where it has worked well, and others where it has not.) What really raised the energy in the room, I think, was the “game” aspect of having scratch cards. The physical act of having to scratch a card (like winning a lottery or a gamble) got students very passionate about the activity.

The scratch cards from IF*AT by Epstein Education were used. If the students scratch the right answer, a star appears! (Hah! College students can be motivated by stars. It’s not just for young kids.) If the answer is incorrect, there is a blank instead. This gives the students immediate feedback (and a high energy sense of anticipation as one students scratches a choice). If the group gets the answer wrong, they discuss what they would try next and why. It’s also easy to grade because you can see how many tries the group needed to get the right answer. But it’s the peer discussion that’s key! The students invested energy not just in getting the right answer but they really wanted to know why an answer might be wrong (either individually or as a group). They went beyond “did I get it right or wrong?” to “WHY did I get it right or wrong?” While this type of peer learning activity is not new, the simple use of the game-like scratch cards significantly changed the energy dynamics and ratcheted up the immersion factor (not to mention the meta-cognitive reflection).

Games, role-playing and immersion are what light minds on fire – the argument made by Carnes. But amidst his many positive examples of student engagement, he also pauses to consider potential problems with the Reacting approach. In Chapter 9 (“Teaching the Past by Getting it Wrong”), he considers a number of arguments that might undercut this approach. I encourage you to read his book if you’re interested in the details. I do however want to highlight an interesting diversion he makes to discuss Plato, Socrates, and mimesis – assimilating oneself into another self both in speech and mannerism, essentially role-playing by immersion.

In Plato’s Republic, mimesis is banned in the ideal city-state: “So if we are visited in our state by someone who has the skill to transform himself into all sorts of characters and represent all sorts of things… [we] shall tell him that he and his kind have no place in our city.” There are several arguments for this. For one, such folks provide a superficial misrepresentation (they are not “truth”). Another issue is that they lead people to unsuitable (and perhaps unseeming) activity. Carnes paraphrases the argument: “But a shoemaker who imagined himself to be a warrior [being enthralled by the performance of actors] would do neither job well. This was particularly pertinent to the ruling elite. Because their task was to rule, rulers should do nothing but rule. They should never imitate (through mimesis) actions of any other kind.”

Carnes think that this argument is “little more than a smoke screen to conceal a far more compelling danger. Namely that mimesis was psychologically too potent… Athenians, Socrates insisted, had become besotted with Homeric representation: they crowded round to see orators and actors bring [heroes and other characters] to life… The Greeks had become suckers for the reality shows of their day.” (And not much has changed in two millennia.) The utopian state should suppress or perhaps even eliminate poets and actors “because mimesis inflicts a cumulative psychological damage on audiences. Reason appeals to our best self, while representation appeals to the lower elements of the mind.” And perhaps, Carnes argues, scholars have taken this too much to heart. Academia, in its “critical detachment” might in fact be anti-mimesis – dissecting, reducing, atomizing, the subject matter until it becomes dead, dull, lifeless. I’m pretty sure that’s what at least some of my students think of chemistry. (I hope I disabuse them of such a notion.)

The kicker is that while Plato is making this philosophical argument, he clearly understands the importance of engaging his audience to make his point and ensure they would long remember his words. How does he do so? “Plato channeled the spirit and words of Socrates and had him ‘speak’ directly to readers in the first person, present tense (like Homer!).” In a classical irony, after criticizing Homeric myth and mimetic approaches, Plato, the cunning pedagogue, employs mimesis to teach his philosophical truths. Can I do the same with chemical concepts? Or will the potential distortions or representations detract from the “scientific truths”? If we’re going to immerse students in mimetic roles and game-like situations, will our classes need warning labels? Warning! Mimesis might occur!