A can of Pringles, a stack of multicolored paper and a teacher lying her rear off.This is apparently a perfect recipe for teaching kids about what happens when you refuse to share power and try to keep all the good stuff for yourself: a.k.a. the conflict between the patricians and plebeians in ancient Rome. You remember your history: the patricians were the ruling class in the early days of the Roman republic. They didn't let the plebeians vote or participate in the government, but they did force them to serve in the army. The plebs, having none of it and comprising about 95% of the population, voted with their feet and walked out. Literally! They went and camped outside the city gates until the patricians agreed to share some power. True equality came gradually, but at the height of the Roman republic, the plebs and the pats shared power, and the republic flourished for almost 300 years before the rise of the emperors. Representative government, written laws (which led to constitutions), and checks and balances were invented in the process.
The history textbook we use is mostly brilliant, and the Patricians vs. Plebeians Rome activity we did this week is amazing. It creates the conditions of ancient Rome in a classroom full of thoroughly modern 12 year olds. What happens is this: the teacher tells the class that they are going to create a mosaic to represent an aspect of ancient Roman culture. This is complete hooey. In reality, most of the class is going to be given the mind-numbing task of cutting up tiny pieces of colored paper (ostensibly for the "mosaic") while a small, randomly chosen group (the Pats) gets to sit back, watch the work and snack on chips.
This, not surprisingly, breeds serious resentment among the other kids. I have a cushiony area in my classroom, and the Pats got to kick back while eating. Before too long, there were mumbles of discontent, scissors being thrown dramatically on tables and threats of work stoppages. As the teacher, I'm instructed to encourage this by dropping lines like: Gee, I wish I could eat chips on the cushions; and Whoa, this is so unfair, right? The beautiful thing about 6th graders is that by this time, they have forgotten I set up the whole scenario in the first place. When resentment is at a boiling point (several kids in my class wanted to rush the cushions and take the chips by force), I instruct the Plebs to go into another corner of the classroom and elect a representative to bring their demands to the Pats.
The thing is, I've also told the kids that five whole points of their grade is at stake. Everyone loses (including the Pats) if the mosaic isn't done on time. Yet another big, fat whopper. But it's crucial for creating motivation. All of a sudden, everyone has the same thing at stake. Just like in ancient Rome, the patricians couldn't get anything done without the plebs--and the plebs had the numbers in their favor. But neither of them wanted society to crumble or degenerate into chaos, so they had to find a solution.
In one class (the same class that doesn't know what a furnace is), the lesson went like clockwork. I could not have asked for better if I'd scripted it myself--and, and always, it had everything to do with the kids. The Pats buried themselves in the part. They lorded the chips over their classmates, refused to lift a finger and repeatedly rejected the Plebs' demands. When that didn't work, they tried to bribe them with chips (a precursor to bread and circuses?). The Plebs fought back ("It's not about the Pringles!" was the rallying cry) and wouldn't budge until the Pats agreed to work and share. Which they refused to do until the very last minute! Five kids who every other day are the portraits of respect and citizenship. They got their hands on a can of Pringles and didn't want to let go. It was like that mind experiment from the 1950s where ordinary suburbanites got to administer electric shocks to their neighbors and ended up morphing into sadists. Absolute power (or control of the junk food) corrupts absolutely!
After the Pats and the Plebs finally made it work (which happened after much debate, with the Plebs holding firm), I stopped the activity and came clean. No mosaic. No points off. Just a little emotional manipulation in the service of education. Oh, Ms. Roberson! How could you?! There were many scandalized looks (and no one does scandalized better than 6th graders). A small group looked as though they'd stage a second rebellion. I calmed everyone down by pulling out a fresh can of Pringles, and we all passed it around as we sat on the cushions and read the real story of ancient Rome.
The lessons we learned along with the ancient Romans were remarkably apropos, as they always have been, but I was struck yet again by how much we can learn from the past. The kid from Ohio (the same one who had much to say about furnaces) said it best, if not as articulately as Cicero might have: "Man, Ms. R, the people with the stuff...they want to keep it; and the people without the stuff...they totally want the stuff!" If he learns nothing else this year, I guess I've done my job.
But there were more serious parallels. We talked about how the plebs in Rome rebelled relatively peacefully. During the height of the mosaic activity, more than a few of the Plebs in my class asked if they could fight the Pats. Of course, I said no, but as much for historical accuracy as for safety reasons. The plebs in Rome fought with their feet. Why? Once we all calmed down, the kids got it instantly: they didn't want to ruin their city; they wanted to keep their families safe; they didn't want to lose their jobs or their farms. They all had something at stake. With the memory of their anger, they felt how injustice can lead to violence--and they saw how violence may not be the only solution. As so many of my students, the Palestinians and Jordanians as well as others, watch the events unfolding in Gaza, it is more relevant than ever to remind this generation of a moment in history when justified anger was channeled in nonviolent AND effective ways. The situation in modern-day Palestine and Israel is different and complex, but there are still things we can learn from ancient Rome. We'll be talking about it more and more in the days to come...
7 comments:
wuz was the flavor of the pringles?
Ah, the social justice curriculum. Let us know if anyone can boil down an exercise that pushes Ayn Rand or Adam Smith on 6th graders.
I don't remember ever having to do one of those exercises except once at Cate when formal dinner was replaced by Steak/Lobster for the chosen rich, usual formal dinner fare for the middle class, and beans and rice for the poor. The failure of the exercise lay in the fact that the beans and rice were much better than the regular meal (and that high schoolers aren't 6th graders)
"Of course, I said no, but as much for historical accuracy as for safety reasons."
Do let us know how it goes when you get to the French Revolution.
And how will you handle the end of the Punic Wars? That's probably the best example of conflict resolution in history. That'll give your Palestinian kids something to think about.
Sour cream and onion, Teni! :-) We then switched to that new spicy kind.
Seriously, B? Clearly, I must have an "agenda" if I use accurate history to point out other ways besides violence to solve conflicts where both parties have something at stake.
It was not my intention to imply that it always works out that way. It was my intention to point out a situation when it did.
The Punic Wars are next, btw. I'll let you know how it goes.(We don't do the French Revolution, only ancient history this year.)
I saddens me that you would wish anyone's child (Palestinian or otherwise) to consider Rome's burning Carthage to the ground at the end of the Punic Wars as "probably the best example of conflict resolution in history." Do you really think schools should promote a "survival of the fittest/smartest/laissez faire" environment? It's not the education we had. Is it the education you want for others?
What an incredibly wonderful class activity -- what did we used to call them: "simulation games?" Makes the point far more powerfully than a lecture, discussion or even video! Very moving to hear about their experience of it.
I never liked spicy stuff when I was little. A doesn't either. Fortunately, I don't think they had pringles in anything but original.
The reason I suspect you have an agenda is that you are emphasizing with the exercise an episode that is fairly exceptional. Revolt and repression are more the norm. So why this exercise? As exposition, it's cool. It gives the kids a feel for the dynamics involved in the secession (or in most labor strikes for that matter). But are you doing it just for the expository value or to push a viewpoint that conflicts ought to be resolved in a certain way or that they ought to have a certain outcome? Do you actually ask them to look at what circumstances made cooperation the optimal strategy for both sides (in your exercise as in history) vs. the circumstances that make confrontation the best way to achieve one's goals? Or are you just tacitly (or explicitly) enouraging the conclusion that adversaries with competing interests would generally do better to cooperate? Historians like to label themselves as social scientists in order to borrow a mantle of legitimacy from the scientific method. But they forfeit it when they impose value judgements on their analyses (as a lot of them do). I wouldn't expect an elementary teacher to have quite the same detachment, but you still give up credibility when you manipulate your kids. Fortunately, with 5th graders, credibility is cheap enough to be re-purchased with chips.
On a side note--manipulating them with grades bothers me for a couple reasons. The first is that it erodes the actual value of grades as a tool to communicate to kids how they are performing. The second (and worse one) is that it reinforces the notion that grades per se have an intrinsic value to be sought for their own sake by any means. In a couple years, these kids will start believing the myth that their futures depend on where they get their undergraduate educations which depends in turn on their grades. In fact, given your demographic, some of them are probably already caught up in it. That attitude doesn't need any more encouragement than it already gets. If your kids aren't competetive enough to play your games just for the sake of being winners and coming out on top (you must remember me when I was in 5th and 6th grade playing those historical sim games), can't you think of other trivial ways to motivate them? I mean they're kids after all.
But back to the point. Moving forward in history, I shouldn't have used as vague a word as "best" to describe the example of the razing of Carthage--particularly since my point is that you shouldn't judge history in that way. "Most thorough", "most complete", or "most permanent" would have been more apt. So my question would be whether you would do an exercise that puts them in the position of the Romans. Facing a twice defeated rival that was a threat to your existence and is becoming increasingly difficult to contain, how do you handle the situation? Do you try to continue to contain it at increasing expense? Do you re-impose your will and extend the period of the punitive tribute you had been demanding? Do you seek a final solution to the problem? What are the potential rewards and risks of your courses of action? Why did Rome, who was sometimes very magnanimous in victory, choose genocide in this case (and not in others)? In hindsight, how did that decision work out?
Now yeah, that's a bit heavy for little kids, but you could probably manage in such a way that they wouldn't get nightmares.
The point is that by emphasizing one episode over another, you are promoting a certain outlook (which isn't far from promoting a certain ideology) rather than teaching about the world as it is.
Maybe a better exercise (ie, a more characteristic example of a foil to the one you did and less grim) would be if you were studying renaissance Italy (outside the historical scope of what you're doing, but just as an example) to look at Machiavelli. Would you run an exercise designed to encourage kids to suck up to those more powerful, exploit those below them, and betray their peers? You could take the boardgame diplomacy, rewrap it to change the historical context, and let the kids have a blast manipulating each other for an afternoon. It's a wonderful game, because it rewards cooperation, but it rewards even more getting people to cooperate with you and then stabbing them in the back.
Anyway, it's probably good that I wouldn't want to teach little kids. I'd warp them terribly. >:)
And just because I'm practically writing an essay, don't think I'm saying you're a pinko or a bad teacher or even that one exercise means I can conclude that you're trying to infect your kids with leftism. But it is worth thinking about.
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