For items relating to popular education for union democracy, including blog entries, etc.
Like the card game of the same name (AKA "I doubt it."), which plays on the joy of lying and the fear of discovery. Mark Twain described lying as "a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need, the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and surest friend." It is also a fundamental language skill that should not be neglected.
The flow:
In his autobiography, Leon Trotsky tells the story of meeting an old electrician and Narodnik named Ivan Andreyevich Mukhin. As Trotsky tells it, Mukhin used navy beans to give a lesson in revolution. As you're sorting out your feelings about Trotsky and the Russian Revolution, consider this learning activity.
I have given up using the evaluation technique in which you ask people, "If this meeting were a pair of shoes, what kind of shoes would they be? Roman Sandals? Pumps? Flippers?" Or, "If this workshop was a cup of coffee what kind of coffee would it be? Espresso? Turkish coffee? Soy or whole milk?" (I like that kind of thing, but I have found that not everyone does!)
But, we can borrow a tool used to evaluate coffee and other things to evaluate our work: the radar chart. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_chart)
Learned this at Kani Club.
In pairs, one person (The Giver) mimes giving the other a gift. Her mime should show some quality of the gift -- size, weight, temperature, value, etc.
The Receiver receives the gift in kind (showing its weight, etc) and identifies it. E.g., "Oh what a beautiful lobster! Thank you so much!"
The Giver, in the spirit of "Yes, and...", follows the Receiver's lead, adding some detail about the Gift. E.g., "I pulled it up in the trap this morning and thought of you."
Sometimes the most important part of a meeting or event is making contacts, networking. This activity uses the format of a personals ad to have people introduce themselves and quickly identify people they wish to get to know.
The format is simple. On an index card, people write:
*This means relevant information about you for the purposes of this event, e.g., in a meeting of labor activists, your union affiliation or other organization, etc. People should feel free to play with this, though.
A "quick and dirty" evaluation activity.
In groups of three, people prepare a short (2 minute) role play based on this scenario:
It's the day after class. One person meets his/her two friends who attended class. S/he asks them, "How was class last night?", pressing them for details. The role play ends when the friend asks, "will you go to the class next week?" and the person replies.
Like in any role play, it helps to choose a specific place and time of day, so people can imagine a context for their meeting.
My reading of the Marfán cartoon, as a would-be ignorant schoolmaster:
Every activity is a box into which I put people -- of course, as in any game (except the Hunger Games or Battle Royale), people choose to participate at some level, but as Huizinga said about sorcery, that one chooses to be duped, it is a constraint nonetheless. Whether people will "get out" of the activity and, if so, how, is to be seen. My job is to uphold the integrity of the box and support the individuals as they seek their way(s) out.
In this game the players improvise a dialogue along the lines of the famous "Quelle Coincidence!!" dialogue in Eugene Ionesco's "La Cantatrice Chauve" (see the opening lines below).
In pairs, one person initiates the conversation as if it is the first time s/he is meeting the other. The first line is, "Haven't I met you somewhere before?"
In the spirit of "yes, and...", the second person agrees and adds some new detail, e.g., "Yes, I was thinking the same thing, maybe at the horse track?"
In this game, three people have a conversation with one person playing the role of interpreter. In fact all three are speaking the same language, but two pretend they do not understand each other, so they need the interpreter.
The interpreter's role in this game is to misinterpret everything the speakers say, producing the maximum of confusion and misunderstanding.
Example:
Person 1: I am very pleased to meet you.
Interpreter: He says, "what took you so long?"
Person 2: I am not late; I think our meeting was for 4pm and it is 4pm now?
This is a spiel that I give when beginning work with a new group.
Feel Free
In this course there is one rule: feel free. To me this means three things:
