This week, in addition to our usual profile interview for the upcoming FATJEF in Rancho Cucamonga, CA. on April 24, 2010; I wanted to highlight a simulation involving scholar aged youth.
I asked our mentor extraordinaire, Dr. Shanon Brooks of ReValue America and Face To Face With Greatness, to give us some insight into the simulation process and what the benefits of this activity are.
He graciously supplied the following information.
If you don’t have scholar aged youth, now is definitely the time for “You, Not Them” application!
Read on, and feel free to leave a comment about what you learned!
You’ll be glad you did!
Simulations: The Secret Weapon of Leadership Education
Compiled by Shanon Brooks
A significant amount of my time in the navy was spent in a simulator. Our lives depended on being skilled in maneuvering our mammoth 560 ft submarine in the dark depths of the Atlantic Ocean. The high level of proficiency and coordinated efforts of the crew was integral to successfully diving and surfacing and underwater deployments that could last as long as 6 weeks. These skills were honed by hundreds of hours simulating these maneuvers over and over again.
A key component of Leadership Education is Simulations. Similar to my experience in the navy, academic simulations hone critical thinking and speaking skills that are difficult to acquire anywhere else. Participation in such activities are critical to the development of all future leaders.
The legacy of using simulations in American Liberal Arts education extends back to the famous professor of the College of William and Mary; George Wythe.
Wythe’s study of jurisprudence prompted him to revive the practices of “readings” and “mootings,” which had not been used at the famous English Inns of Courts since the 1600s. One of Wythe’s students, John Brown of Staunton, who was later to become one of Kentucky’s first two U.S. Senators, has left an account of Wythe’s innovations:
Mr. Wythe, ever attentive to the improvement of his pupils, founded two institutions for that purpose, the first in a Moot Court, held monthly or oftener in the place formerly occupied by the Gen. Court in the Capitol. Mr. Wythe and the other professors sit as judges. Our audience consists of the most respectable of the Citizens, before whom we plead causes given out by Mr. Wythe. He has [also] formed us into a Legislative Body, consisting of about 40 members. Mr. Wythe is Speaker to the House and takes all possible pains to instruct us in the Rules of Parliament. We meet every Saturday and take under our consideration those Bills drawn up by the Committee appointed to revise the laws, then we debate and alter (I will not say amend) with the greatest freedom. I take an active part in these Institutions and hope thereby to rub off that natural bashfulness which at present is extremely prejudicial to me. These exercises serve not only as best amusement after severer studies, but are very useful and attended with many important advantages.
Wythe’s chief aim as an educator was to train his students for leadership. In a letter to his friend John Adams in 1785, Wythe wrote that his purpose was to “form such characters as may be fit to succeed those which have been ornamental and useful in the national councils of America.” “Mr. Wythe’s School”—both in his study and in the Wren Building at the College of William and Mary—produced a generation of lawyers, judges, ministers, teachers, and statesmen who helped fill the need for leadership in the young nation.
Simulations allow for vicarious decision-making and problem-solving experience in areas such as government, business, even home and family without the risks commonly associated with inexperience.
But the root purpose of simulations is to teach the student how to exercise imagination and vision, cardinal hallmarks of every great leader and statesman.
Simulations can consist of mock congresses, moot courts, business planning, model UN and various other fictional and real scenarios where students take on roles and work individually and in teams to identify and solve problems.
Scenarios are developed from historical, current and possible future events.
Simulations should be held regularly, with the interim used in research, negotiation and planning.
In addition to the skills of researching, writing, communicating and working in teams, simulations help future leaders to prepare for, manage and rally during actual events.
All students will benefit from hours of simulation experience.
Sources:
1. William Munford, quoted in: Alonzo Thomas Dill, George Wythe: Teacher of
Liberty (Williamsburg: Virginia Independence Bicentennial Commission,
1979), p. 43.
2. Forrest McDonald, The Formation of the American Republic (Baltimore:
Penguin Books, 1965), p. 158.
3. The Rev. Andrew Burnaby, quoted in Dill, p. 7. I am indebted to Dill’s George
Wythe: Teacher of Liberty, op. cit., ref. 1, for much of the information in this
article.
4. Colonial Williamsburg Official Guidebook (Williamsburg: The Colonial
Williamsburg Foundation, 1972, 7th ed.), p. 90.
5. Charles S. Sydnor, American Revolutionaries in the Making (New York: The
Free Press, 1965), p. 51.
6. Tucker later authored the first American textbook on jurisprudence. See Park
Rouse, Jr., Virginia: The English Heritage in America (New York: Hastings
House Pub., 1966), p. 108.
7. Jefferson, quoted in Saul K. Padover, ed., Thomas Jefferson on
Democracy (New York: D. Appleton-Century Co., Inc., 1939), p. 91.
8. Fawn Brodie, Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History (New York: W. W.
Norton and Co., Inc., 1974), p. 62.
9. Jack P. Greene, The Quest for Power (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1972,
first pub. in 1963 by the University of North Carolina Press) 528 pp.
10. The mixed government theories are explained in detail in Gordon S.
Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1969), see esp. pp. 197-255.
11. Lyman H. Butterfield, et al., eds., Diary and Autobiography of John
Adams, 4 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), II, p. 230.
12. Edmund Burke, quoted in Wallace Note-stein, The English People on the Eve
of Colonization (New York: Harper and Row, 1954), p. ix.
13. John and Katherine Bakeless, Signers of the Declaration (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Co., 1969), p. 99.
14. Ashbel Green, “The Life of the Rev’d John Witherspoon, D.D., Ll.D., With a
Brief Review of His Writings; and a Summary Estimate of His Character and
Talents,” MS, New Jersey Historical Society, Newark, N.J., n.d., p. 106.
15. George Wythe to John Adams, Dec. 5, 1785, quoted in Oscar L.
Shewmake, The Honorable George Wythe(n.p., 1954), p. 16.
16. Forrest McDonald, We the People: The Economic Origins of the
Constitution (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 259
2 Responses to “Simulations: The Secret Weapon of Leadership Education”
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Debbie » Monday, March 1, 2010, 5:12 am
Are the above resources listed to show the value of simulations and/or to give ideas to parents on different possible simulations they may construct with their own children? Which of the above sources would be best in obtaining ideas for simulations? Are these resources easily obtainable or are some outdated?
[Reply]
stephanie » Monday, March 1, 2010, 8:59 am
I am not a fan of role playing, though I know it can be an effective learning tool. Just one more thing I need to learn to like on this path of Leadership Ed.
[Reply]