Abstract

Efforts to engage students with difficult issues of United States history have both been intensified and encountered resistance in recent years.   In our study, we investigate an initiative that introduced Jewish day school students to the painful history of slavery in the United States. Through an online simulation, the Jewish Court of All Time (JCAT), learners explored the history of slavery, particularly through debating the fate of the controversial Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery. We explore the affordances and challenges of simulations as opportunities for students to start to develop comfort and expertise in speaking about complex issues such as race. In particular, we illustrate how White students who chose to play Black characters articulated moral outrage about slavery and then reflected on the similarities and differences between themselves and their characters. We conclude with questions for further research.

 “JCAT has made me think a lot about racism. It made me think differently because I had to look at things through the eyes of someone who went through racism themselves."

-Jewish Day School Student playing Jackie Robinson

 Introduction

Efforts to engage students with difficult issues of U.S. history have both been intensified and encountered resistance in recent years.   In our study, we investigate an initiative that introduced Jewish day school students to the painful history of slavery in the United States. Through an online simulation, the Jewish Court of All Time (JCAT),^[1]  learners explored the history of slavery, particularly through debating the fate of the controversial Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery.  

We define simulations as “pedagogically mediated activities used to reflect the dynamism of real-life events, processes, or phenomena, in which students participate as active agents whose actions are consequential to the outcome of the activity” (Wright-Maley, 2015, p. 8). The simulation design empowers students to shape its narrative; students choose how to represent their characters, with whom to converse, and with whom they ally. As two professors of education, we are part of a team who design and facilitate JCAT simulations. We partner with middle school teachers in Jewish day schools, and also train and supervise university students who participate as mentors to middle school students. All simulation interactions occur asynchronously. (See Appendix 1 for overview)

JCAT cases are grounded in a guiding question: “What does it mean to learn from history?” These cases highlight historical content, including Jewish historical elements, to engage learners with timely topics. Ultimately, the simulation provides opportunities for students to make informed decisions regarding current issues. Prior to the simulation, students research their characters and compose authentic character profiles, which they post on the simulation website. Once the simulation begins, students respond to weekly prompts by stepping into the shoes of their characters. Prompts included questions about primary sources and speeches from key characters. The simulation is designed for characters to respond, comment on each other’s answers, and correspond privately within the simulation. ^[2]

Why is a simulation pedagogy effective for teaching history?

Simulations as a pedagogical tool can be classified as experiential and learner-centered. As Wright-Maley (2018) suggests, the potential of a simulation is long lasting, going beyond the curriculum as “learning that can shape student dispositions, ways of thinking and being, and the manifold skills they use to read and engage with the world” (p. 6). Even though students are aware that decision-making within the game takes place in an imaginative context (Kupperman et al., 2011), they report an increased sense of agency and, in some cases, inspiration to take further action (Rector-Aranda & Raider-Roth, 2015).

Role-playing within a simulation is a vehicle for students to develop perspective-taking, an important civic disposition. By playing characters, they learn to consider other’s point of view-- and in some cases perspectives that differ from their own (Barton & Levstik, 2004). Participation in democracy requires citizens to understand multiple perspectives and to engage with divergent viewpoints.  In order to authentically portray another, students must compare their own thoughts on an issue to that of their character, creating palpable tension between themselves and others.  Immersive role-playing experiences, especially over an extended period of time, provide opportunities for students to wrestle with multiple factors affecting their characters’ points of view (Rector-Aranda et al., 2017). Lo (2018) describes character roles as opportunities for students to “not necessarily to walk in someone else’s shoes, but at least to try on shoes that they would not ordinarily choose to wear, even if they [ultimately’] choose not to walk in them” (p.332).  By including a variety of characters with different points of view, simulations expose students to a wider variety of perspectives than might normally be represented in a class discussion about important issues.

Some critique simulations that include difficult history, such as the Atlantic Slave Trade and the Holocaust. They maintain that these events should not be reenacted because of the potential for psychological harm to those playing both victims and perpetrators (Schuster, 2018; Schweber, 2004). To counter this issue, we made sure to enact the simulation in the present, so that students would reflect back on the past, in order for them to have distance from traumatic events of decades ago.

Characters Selection

We promote simulations where students choose characters they believe can contribute meaningfully to the issues under discussion.  Asserting the power of character choice is often the starting point of purposeful JCAT engagement.  Characters may draw from historical or contemporary figures in any field, and students choose characters from diverse backgrounds. Recommended approaches for students beginning the character selection process are

(1) deciding whether to portray someone whose perspective aligns with or challenges their own, and,

(2) identifying someone capable of providing insightful commentary on the simulation’s key issues.^[3]

While students have the freedom to authentically portray their chosen characters, the simulation maintains a norm of dignified speech, encouraging respectful interactions akin to a courtroom setting. Graduate students, who participate alongside middle schoolers, model this respectful language. This strong code of conduct fosters an environment where students feel empowered to take risks, including portraying characters from diverse backgrounds.

We recognize that some might criticize an educational activity that encourages predominantly White students to represent those of other backgrounds, particularly other races, as an example of  cultural appropriation. It might also be seen as a misguided display of White privilege as the majority  are not usually targets of racism in public spaces. Nevertheless, we hope to begin to demonstrate the benefits to  students of taking on these roles in carefully curated and guided educational experiences. This study explores the question: How do White Jewish students confront the history of slavery and racism in the United States while playing Black characters?

The Confederate Memorial

Figure 1: Moses Ezekiel (1914). The Confederate Memorial. Arlington National Cemetery. Arlington, VA/ USA

(Image credit: Wikimedia Commons, 2013)

Dedicating  memorials was a trend in the 1890s through the 1950s when Confederates veterans and their descendants erected monuments honoring the Confederacy (Little, 2021). White Southerners who installed such monuments wishing to honor fallen Confederates also did so in order to rebuild a culture of White supremacy (Blight, 2017). Funded by the Daughters of the American Confederacy, descendants of Confederates promoted a Lost Cause narrative; they argued that the South should have won the war while painting a sanitized picture of slavery, downplaying the subjugation of Black people (Blight, 2024; Shuster, 2018).

 The Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery was dedicated in 1914. It was designed by artist Moses Ezekiel, a Southern Jew who served in the Confederate Army, and its placement in the national cemetery represented reunification between North and South (Herbert, 1914). Recently, as part of the Black Lives Matter movement, and protests against police brutality, many have demonstrated against Confederate monuments, seeing them as both degrading to Black people and reinforcing White supremacy, therefore calling for their removal (Ortiz & Diaz, 2020). At the time of the JCAT simulation, the memorial was still in place although it was removed two years later.^[1]

Standing 32 feet tall, the Memorial contained many images; students examined two that represented sanitized visions of enslaved people interacting with their masters. At the memorial’s dedication, Hilary Herbert, a Southern congressman, described these as illustrating the “kindly relations… between the master and the slave” (Herbert, 1914, p. 77).  In Figure 2 below, an enslaved woman tearfully holds up a baby to a soldier. In Figure 3, the figure set back from a cluster of soldiers is an  enslaved person serving as support staff to Confederate soldiers. He is the only one not holding a rifle.

(Image credit:  Joseph Stephen Russell and Aiden Spencer Clark).

Figure 3

Black Body Servant Marching with Confederate Soldiers
Moses Ezekiel (1914). The Confederate Memorial. Arlington National Cemetery. Arlington, VA.

(Image credit: Joseph Steven Russell and Aiden Spencer Clark).

The Research Study^[1]

The simulation occurred in 2021 with middle school students playing from nine Jewish day schools throughout the United States for eight weeks. As qualitative researchers, we used textual data derived from students’ posts in the simulation; these included mostly in-character writing and some out-of-character reflection in a designated debriefing platform within JCAT, “The Green Room.” We also conducted focus groups post-simulation.

We focus on students who chose to play Black characters. Out of 126 student characters, 31 represented characters identified as Black and 90 represented characters identified as White, with the remainder identifying as mixed race.^[2] According to the teachers, only three students across nine schools self-identified as non-White, indicating that most students portraying Black characters were White-identifying. This dynamic of role-playing is consistent in JCAT; it reflects a tenet of simulation pedagogy where participants assume roles different from their own to experience multiple perspectives.

However, the inclusion of White students portraying Black characters became particularly salient and sensitive during discussions about allyship with the Black community in 2021.  We acknowledge that our identities as White Jewish researchers limit our perspective. Thus, we engaged in discussion with consultants who are Jews of Color^[1], veteran JCAT teachers, and project directors when deciding to maintain the practice of encouraging students to choose characters relevant to the case. We suggested characters for students to play, including Blacks and Jews involved in the Civil War and the civil rights movement, as well as Jews of Color. (See Appendix 2 for a partial list of JCAT characters)

For this exploratory study, we examined the broader group of 31 White students playing Black characters but focus on the comments of three students, those playing Julian Bond, Bishop Desmond Tutu and Sojourner Truth. We considered their work outstanding as they responded consistently and meaningfully to prompts throughout the simulation. Bond made 45 posts, Tutu, 36 and Truth, 43.

Below, we introduce brief biographies of these characters.  Notably, Bond, Tutu and Truth did not have Jewish heritage, while the students representing these characters all identified as White and Jewish. 

Findings

We compared students’ in-character posts to their out-of-character reflections to explore how role-playing shaped their engagement with the Memorial.  Writing in-character, students criticized the monument as propagandistic. During the out-of-character debriefing, they discussed similarities and differences between their character’s perspectives and their own experiences.  These reflections helped them begin to articulate positions they might adapt from the simulation into today's real world.

Critiquing the Memorial
We first present the focus characters’ opinions about the Confederate Memorial  through their response to this prompt:

• What do you think this monument means to supporters of the Confederacy and what details make you think that?
• What does it mean to you? (your character)

All three characters, a civil rights leader, an anti-Apartheid leader and an enslaved person and abolitionist, sharply criticized the monument. They challenged a “false sense” of a Confederate victory in the Civil War.  In particular they critiqued the representation of enslaved people happily interacting with their enslavers. Tutu and Truth further enhanced their critiques with connections to their characters’ lives: Tutu linked his comments about White supremacy to Apartheid in South Africa and Truth directly named an attack on “my and other slaves’ freedom” as the message she took from the monument.

Although some characters acknowledged a point of view that courageous Confederate soldiers deserved to be remembered for their honor and bravery, most participants decided that the memorial should be removed due to its racist message and its potential to cause pain to viewers. The most intense debate centered around whether the memorial should be destroyed or relocated to a museum with added commentary.

Several weeks after their initial posts, the focus characters continued to uphold and deepen their critiques of the monument while explaining their recommendations for its future:

For all three characters, the memorial represented the evils of slavery in the United States and in different ways, they framed its removal from Arlington as a step towards a more just society.   Bond suggested that slavery is inappropriately memorialized in a statue purportedly dedicated to the heroic acts of Confederate soldiers. He connected slavery then to its legacy of racism in the current day, which he wants to “end.” Tutu and Truth promoted moving the memorial to a museum, a presumably less offensive spot, so that according to Truth, viewers could be exposed to “the whole truth,” and then, in Tutu’s words, might “learn from those mistakes” and “fix” the future.  Both Tutu and Truth answer the simulation’s guiding question, “what does it mean to learn from history?”

Authentically composing a character's response to a prompt is challenging because it requires students to envision not only what the character would say but also to align it accurately with the character's biography. For instance, Desmond Tutu, as a leader of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee in South Africa^[1] might very well have supported either the recontextualization of the Confederate Memorial in a museum or its destruction. Nevertheless, it seems likely that based on their life experiences,Bond, Tutu and Truth would not have voted to keep the monument intact at Arlington.

Expanding from the focus characters to the full group (31 students playing Black characters and 90 playing White characters), our findings reveal a  trend: those playing Black characters demonstrated a significantly higher propensity to express moral outrage towards slavery, in-character.  Specifically, 35% of students portraying Black characters expressed such outrage compared to 13% among their peers playing White characters. They made numerous comments expressing horror and dismay that Black people were owned and treated so poorly because of the color of their skin. It seems likely that knowing the biographies of the Black characters contributed to this pattern.

Learning from Debriefing

Debriefing is an important part of any simulation. It is an opportunity for students to reflect on the learning experience, particularly the experience of representing a character. Wright-Maley (2015) names debriefing as a component of “pedagogical mediation,” a crucial element  that emphasizes the teacher’s role in ensuring that educational goals embedded in simulation design are actually achieved.  We emphasize it as a key vehicle for helping students develop a fuller understanding of how individual perspectives on an issue are shaped to a great extent by life experiences and therefore are different for everyone.  During debriefing students can share what they really think about an issue, and such sessions provide students a chance to be heard and authentically share their own perspectives, rather than always “pretending” to be the other person. In JCAT, students are asked online in the “Green Room” and by their teachers in class, to reflect on the experience of playing their character.

We hoped to learn more about how the White students who chose to play Black characters reflected on the similarities and differences between themselves and their characters.

First, we illustrate their responses of the focus characters to a debriefing prompt. Because it was addressed to all students playing characters of all backgrounds, the wording does not explicitly prompt references to identity.

We asked, “Slavery and racism are difficult topics to discuss. What was it like to discuss these topics in and out-of -character?”

All three students appreciated the challenging life experiences of their characters. The students maintained that their personal perspective on the fate of the monument matched what they imagined their characters would have decided (and indeed, the words they put in their characters’ mouths).  However, Tutu and Truth also articulate different life experiences between themselves and their character. The student playing Tutu names his identity: “I am a middle-class White Jew and I have not been through some of the horrible things that other people have” and Truth points out, “discussing these topics in character was challenging as my character was enslaved and had to experience slavery first hand while I have just learned about these terrible things in class.”  This level of awareness, that a White identifying person cannot know what it is like to experience racism as a Black person in the United States, is an important distinction. 

Looking at the full set of responses to this prompt, we see that some of the students playing White characters also expressed this distinction between those who have experienced racism and those who have not. For example, Kim Kardashian said, “It was interesting to discuss it because it isn’t something that both we (student partners) and Kim K experience. We had to think deeply about our decisions and about what we said.” Other students seemed to be moving towards this conclusion when they expressed concerns about “saying the right thing” when discussing a sensitive topic such as racism.

These examples point to the importance of debriefing in role-playing activities, particularly if a goal is to transfer learning outside the simulation space to civic engagement in the broader society. As with all activities, students experience the simulation at a range of developmental levels- not all portray their characters accurately and not all reflect as deeply on the similarities and differences between their characters and themselves. To realize the significant potential of role-playing, it is crucial for teachers to prompt students to reflect on their in-character comments, acknowledge the discomfort with speaking about topics like race, and continue to help students name different components of their identities and how they intersect.

What did we learn?

Our many years working with JCAT students and teachers have shown us that the immersive role-playing experience, where students speak in the first person in the voices of their characters, offers a more rich, complex exposure to multiple perspectives than “learning about” the perspectives held by others.  We also know that students and teachers alike find it difficult to talk about race and appreciate role-playing as a safe venue from which to start to build confidence.

Teaching about race is difficult work that can be emotional and risky. Nevertheless it is imperative for students in Jewish day schools, particularly because they are predominantly White spaces, to have access to learning about the impact of ideas of race and racism historically and in contemporary society.  We encourage teachers to create opportunities for role-playing as one entry point to this conversation. Not every White student has to take on the perspective of a Black character, as the students playing Julian Bond, Desmond Tutu and Sojourner Truth have shown, there is value in this endeavor, for both these students and potentially their classmates who are privy to their brainstorming, decision-making and reflecting.

Researching about teaching and learning about race is also sensitive and complex. To begin with, all of the findings here could benefit from further investigation, adding on additional levels of nuance.  How does one investigate a student’s sense of racial identity and the impact that identity might have on their engagement with content, without asking invasive personal questions? In what ways do students acknowledge their Jewish identity (or not) when articulating ideas about race?How does one avoid harm to the few people of color in Jewish day schools in the process of trying to understand their experiences? And how does the racial background of the teacher or researcher play into these dynamics?

All of these issues seem quite challenging to resolve, but we hope that we and others will forge ahead with this work. Ignoring difficult history such as slavery and its repercussions, and the range of Jewish engagement with issues of race and racism, is not the answer. We believe that students are equipped with imaginations and learn well when respectfully stepping into the shoes of other people, even when crossing the boundary of skin color. We hold a belief that experience includes both what is lived and hypothetical. Thus having students imagine what it would be like to be a victim of racism can be educational, though it requires a lot of support and sensitivity. 

The Haggadah principle of B’chol dor v’dor, in  every generation we should see ourselves as if we came out of Egypt has resonance for both Jewish and Black communities and those who share both heritages.  Role-playing conversations about the impact of slavery is one way for students to start to engage with this message and to start to translate it to action as  they make their way in the world.

Appendix 1: JCAT STAKEHOLDERS

This figure illustrates the collaborative interaction among stakeholders within the simulation. On the left side of the diagram, a classroom teacher sits alongside an icon of a student, representing middle school participants. In the center, the computer screen displays the simulation interface. On the far right side, photographs of two university professors (the authors) are shown with arrows pointing towards a brunette figure, symbolizing their graduate students. Students have many layers of support as they navigate playing their characters because of the input from their teachers, university professors, and graduate students.

Appendix 2: PARTIAL JCAT CHARACTER LIST

Rebecca Shargel

Rebecca Shargel is Professor of Education in the Department of Learning Technologies, Design, and School Library Media in Towson University’s College of Education. She teaches a wide array of courses mostly in the area of educational research. Rebecca also serves as a project director for the Jewish Court of All Time simulation which was funded by the Covenant Foundation. Rebecca’s research interests include facing history through role playing, curricular integration in Jewish day schools, and havruta style text study. In addition, Rebecca is an affiliate faculty member of the Baltimore Hebrew Institute at Towson University. 

 Meredith Katz

Meredith Katz is a Lecturer and Teacher Educator in the Secondary Education and Youth Services (SEYS) program in social studies education at Queens College (City University of New York).  She recently completed twelve years as Clinical Assistant professor of Jewish Education in the William Davidson School of Jewish Education of The Jewish Theological Seminary. Meredith also serves as faculty for the Jewish Court of All Times online simulation program for Jewish day schools, previously funded generously by the Covenant Foundation.  Meredith’s current research interests include citizenship education in Jewish schools, particularly as it relates to the teaching of Jewish history and schools’ efforts to engage with issues of diversity. She is completing two studies with colleagues on the perspectives of predominantly white day school parents, faculty and administrators with regard to their efforts to engage the day school community with issues of race and racism.  Meredith explores the teaching of controversial issues at both the institutional level of administrative decision-making and in teachers’ work in the classroom.

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Footnotes:

^[1] The Truth and Reconciliation Committee of South Africa, established in 1995 by the post-Apartheid South African government,  was  charged “ to help heal the country and bring about a reconciliation of its people by uncovering the truth about human rights violations that had occurred during the period of apartheid.” (Tutu, 2010/2024).

^[1] We consulted with Tamara Fish and Sabrina Sojourner from Khazbar, an organization for Jews of Color: www.khazbar.org. It is a managed project of (Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, a Jewish organization that promotes justice.

^[1] This study is part of a larger research study on middle school students facing difficult history in a simulation.

^[2] Some students played characters in pairs, so the total number of students participating was 175, whereas the number of characters they portrayed is 126. Assignments of racial identity to others is a fraught task; we categorized characters as Black or White based on statements students made in-character.

^[1]  In December of 2023 the monument was removed as part of the efforts to remove Confederate symbols by the Department of Defense, who mandated all Confederate symbols be removed. Its contents were transported and stored in Virginia (U.S. Army, n.d.).