Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Explores ideas, people, and movements of social criticism and social justice, stressing history as a way to understand and engage the present. Content may vary from offering to offering; see course outline for further information. HIST 463W may be repeated for credit only when a different topic is taught. Students with credit for HIST 412 or HIST 412W cannot take HIST 463W for further credit when offered with the course topic "Marxism." Writing.

COURSE DETAILS:

Class Struggle is the Name of the Game

In this course, we’ll take the 1978 board game Class Struggle from archives to action. We’ll play it, read and discuss material, and then rebuild it for today's reality. It's Workers vs. Capital. Your Move.

Why you might like this course:

• You like board games, or are willing to try
• You want to learn about Marx and socialism
• You like the idea of working with others to develop progressive ideas using gaming and games
• You are concerned about today’s economy, the environment, inequality, militarism, and education and want to make a difference

Why you might not like this course:

• See above.

Board games are increasing in popularity. So is the study of Karl Marx and his critique of capitalism. In 1978 left-wing educators created Class Struggle: The Board Game to introduce people to the ideas of Marx and socialism. We will re-invent this game to make it more interesting and useful for people today. We’ll play the game in class, read and write some things, discuss the game and what we’ve read in the context of your experience and ideas, and revise and adapt the original game.

Reading: there will be some. We’ll start with Helen Razer’s book, Total Propaganda: Basic Marxist Brainwashing for the Angry and the Young. Other readings will be made available on Canvas or another platform.

Assessment: there will be some. Small assignments will be used instead of large research papers or examinations and there will be an element of self-assessment. We will discuss this in class.

Expectations: It’s a course based on a board game—if you don’t show up, you can’t play. It may not be possible to do additional work to make up classes you miss. You also will need time to read, think, and write.

You can read about the original board game here: https://www.mentalfloss.com/fun/board-games/story-class-struggle-americas-most-popular-marxist-board-game

Email Mark Leier at leier@sfu.ca if you’d like to discuss the course before you enrol.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

If you want to know why the course outline for History 463 doesn't list educational goals or details about assessment, please read on.

In 1971, the British education expert John Bremer noted that

“Educators find it very easy to make out a list of what they call educational objectives. Well, any fool can sit at a desk and make out a series of educational goals, and I must admit, they usually do. What is much more difficult is not to have goals but to find starting points. The educational task is to help the student find a place from which he [sic] can begin.”

I think Bremer was on to something. Educational goals and assessments are designed long before a class is even scheduled and so they can’t consider the variety, diversity, and curiosity of students and professors. They lead to standardization and inflexibility, to treating people as things, to trying to fit students to the course rather than the course to students. Setting educational goals and assessments ignores the experiences and aspirations of students; it assumes only the professor has knowledge worth imparting, and it assumes the professor knows what people need and want.

It's pretty presumptuous and authoritarian. That’s ironic when we note that a common educational goal at SFU is to equip people to be active democratic citizens.

I think the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire was correct when he observed that

“Authoritarianism will at times cause children and students to adopt rebellious positions, defiant of any limit, discipline, or authority. But it will also lead to apathy, excessive obedience, uncritical conformity, lack of resistance against authoritarian discourse, self-abnegation, and fear of freedom.”

Neither mindless rebellion nor lack of resistance will help us create a livable future and lives worth living. While some practical concerns such as scheduling, ordering and preparing materials, and organizing basic class structure limit how much freedom we have, I think we can develop our goals and assessments in a more democratic way. So I’ve left these open so we can work them out together.

People often prefer to know all these things in advance so they can plan their semester around other courses, work, and personal issues. And most of us are used to an education system that does not require our active participation. Can we ask who that really benefits? Does it help us develop our knowledge, our selves, our capacities to wonder, resist, engage, rage, and laugh? Or does it teach us to obey, to conform, to submit to the mute compulsion of work and authority?

Our course will not be one of chaos or uncertainty. It won't be an exercise in pure democracy where we debate and discuss every aspect of the course: life, and the semester, are too short for that. But we can discuss and set our goals and assessments as a class, and we can adjust and revise as we go.

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING:

REQUIRED READING NOTES: