I ran across an interesting news item today. Earlier this month Dr. Mark C. Carnes, who co-wrote one of the freshman history textbooks I critique in my columns, published an article titled Setting Students’ Minds on Fire.  He describes an “active-learning concept” that he helped invent, which is supposed to increase students’ level of involvement. Instead of studying what actually happened in earlier times, his students play elaborate games in which they act out their own version of history, fueled by their own imaginations. 
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