Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Checkers in Prison
Here, here, and also here are three parts of a clear, succinct, and even illustrated guide to eleven different checker games. Yes, that's right, eleven. Probably more if you think about combining rules. About which is something I would definitely urge you to think.
Let me tell you why this is so important to me. Years ago - o, maybe 30 - I held a checkers class in a prison in Pennsylvania. It was going to be a class about a lot of different games, but the residents (ok, inmates) weren't allowed to have cards or dice and checker sets were readily available and/or easily made. So, anyway, I decided to teach them different ways to play checkers. This was a major shock for many of them - that there was in fact more than one way to play checkers. And a major opportunity for me to start a dialogue with them on starting dialogues with each other - around rules, around thinking about the game itself, and not just winning. Because if you start out to play checkers, and the next question is "what kind of checkers do you want to play," then, all of a sudden, the relationship between the players becomes more important than the game itself. I mean, the game is still important, believe me you, but making the decision, figuring out what you both want to play, is an act of connection, of communication, of community. Playing with rules, selecting the rules you want to play by, and then keeping those rules, these are the kinds of thing free people do, the kind of thing that people who are part of society, who help to build society, do.
And they really wanted to learn every game I could teach them, every variation. And it was fun.
from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith
Let me tell you why this is so important to me. Years ago - o, maybe 30 - I held a checkers class in a prison in Pennsylvania. It was going to be a class about a lot of different games, but the residents (ok, inmates) weren't allowed to have cards or dice and checker sets were readily available and/or easily made. So, anyway, I decided to teach them different ways to play checkers. This was a major shock for many of them - that there was in fact more than one way to play checkers. And a major opportunity for me to start a dialogue with them on starting dialogues with each other - around rules, around thinking about the game itself, and not just winning. Because if you start out to play checkers, and the next question is "what kind of checkers do you want to play," then, all of a sudden, the relationship between the players becomes more important than the game itself. I mean, the game is still important, believe me you, but making the decision, figuring out what you both want to play, is an act of connection, of communication, of community. Playing with rules, selecting the rules you want to play by, and then keeping those rules, these are the kinds of thing free people do, the kind of thing that people who are part of society, who help to build society, do.
And they really wanted to learn every game I could teach them, every variation. And it was fun.
from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith
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