Last block period, my Ancient World History students played in a hypothetical game. This was not a board game or an online game, but a thinking game. Every decision they made had real consequences for the success of their fictional family and nation.
We have been discussing the necessary things for life and civilization throughout the year. On several occasions, a student here or there would make the remark, "Why are they so dumb?" in reference to the actions of a monarch, philosopher, etc. Considering what we know now, it is easy to see why some actions in the past might be construed as foolish; however, one thing that is hard to appreciate is the pressure/circumstances that these individuals were under/in.
To try and gain a better grasp of this, I created a series of scenarios in which the groups (selected by random drawing) would have between one and five minutes to discuss a course of action and ask only one clarification question if they wanted more background information before making their decision. Here is an example scenario...
You have been kicked off the land that your family has ruled for generations. Your people are loyal to you, but their loyalty comes with risk. For now, you cannot protect them against the king's army. Do you ask them to openly support you and risk retaliation, or be safe and swear loyalty to the new lord?
In every scenario, we saw sometimes very different responses from the groups, indicating what they saw as prudent or important. We also observed that in certain scenarios there were unwinnable situations. Life is not always going to end up with perfect situations. Sometimes you have to make decisions knowing that some of your countrymen will die or be mad at you. If you want to rule a country, you can't make everyone happy and be considered successful.
With the added benefit of the students enjoying the game immensely, this exercise put the students into the hot seat. They learned that there can be a lot of pressure when the decisions you make mean the death or religious conversion of thousands of people. The real question is, are these so-called "dumb" decisions made by these historical figures really that, or do we simply fail to appreciate the limited information they had with which to make the decision or external pressures on them that we don't have?
