In a shady grove nestled among the ruins of Ostia Antica, a
group of children stand in a circle, eagerly anticipating the game they are
about to play. Donned in matching blue
button-downs, red scarves, green baseball hats with yellow embroidering, they fidget
and tease each other as they await instruction.
Their counselors—two men dressed in makeshift gladiator outfits, are
doing their best to keep the children focused on the task at hand.
The
children’s parents signed them up for a summer camp on the basis that it would
be “educational”. Today, they have been
brought on a field trip to Ostia Antica to learn about what life was like during
the city’s prime. It had seemed like a
good idea to the instructors to dress up as fierce warriors in order to appeal
to the children’s imaginations; in the present moment, however, they could
think of a million things they would rather do than chase after a bunch of
screaming kids while wearing cut-up cardboard boxes.
One
gladiator moves around the outside of the circle, tapping the children’s heads
with the words, “Uno, due, tre! Uno, due,
tre!” When he has finished assigning
them numbers, he calls out to the group.
The children scatter, trying to find those who have been assigned the
same number. Once they have broken into
three groups, they begin their game.
Despite careful observation, I could not tell what the point of this
game was, or how it was meant to teach the children anything about gladiators. After a few minutes of moving about their
groups in a disorganized fashion, the game appeared to disband. The gladiators handed out stickers to the
children, who smiled and stuck them onto the front of their blue-button downs
and green baseball caps.
No comments:
Post a Comment