Why Simulation Activities Should Not Be Used

When teaching about historical atrocities, educators seek to build empathy through interactive lessons. What seems like a false solution is turning to simulation activities. These exercises frequently backfire, causing real harm to students, families and school communities.

The Problem:

News stories regularly surface about classroom simulations gone wrong: students assigned roles as "persecuted" or "privileged" to understand the Holocaust, or asked to experience what it "felt like" to be enslaved. Some of these activities have had students wear a yellow star, stand at the back of the room or lunch line, or be barred from certain bathrooms.

Some reasons simulation activities can be problematic are:

• They are pedagogically unsound because they trivialize the experience of the victims and can leave students with the impression at the conclusion of the activity that they actually know what it was like to experience these atrocities.
• They stereotype group behavior and distort historical reality by reducing groups of people and their experiences and actions to one-dimensional representations.
• They can reinforce negative views of the victims.
• They can put students in the position of defending and/or identifying with the oppressors.
• They impede critical analysis by oversimplifying complex historical events and human behavior, leaving students with a skewed view of history.
• They disconnect these events from the context of global history.
• They can be emotionally upsetting or damaging for students who may identify with the victims or for other reasons. 

What To Do Instead:

Rather than utilizing simulations, educators can build genuine empathy and understanding through teaching methods such as:  

• Primary Source Analysis: Analyzing primary sources like survivor testimony, letters, diaries and historical documents allows students to engage directly with real voices and experiences.
• Case Study Discussion: Guided analysis of real historical decisions and their consequences, without asking students to "play" a role, allows students to students to develop compassion and empathy, share how they feel about what they’re learning and consider how it has meaning in their own lives.
• Reflective Writing and Discussion: Prompts that ask students to examine their own values, biases and potential responses to injustice, allow them to process the emotional weight of the historical learning without reenacting trauma.
• Action-Oriented Learning: Connecting historical lessons to present-day responsibility helps students identify concrete steps they can take when they witness injustice today. 

The goal of teaching about historical atrocities is to help students understand their own roles and responsibilities in the world around them, not to relive trauma they cannot authentically experience. Educators should give students real opportunities to think through what meaningful action looks like when they encounter injustice or face difficult moral choices in their own lives.