Our brains are disturbingly malleable, as psychology experiments through the years have shown. In the most famous, suburbanites turn into vicious sadists when given the power to administer lethal electric shocks to people they've never seen. College students morph into cruel prison guards, and blue eyed children discriminate against friends with brown eyes simply because the Blue Eyes came to school one morning and were told they were superior.
We read about these studies and can't help imagining ourselves as participants. Surely, we would be the exceptions to the rule. After all, we could never be fooled into torture and oppression. We are sophisticated and educated, empathetic and savvy. Someone else might be a psychology student's dream guinea pig, but we would not be fooled.
Or would we? I'm not so sure.
Last year, I wrote about a powerful social studies lesson that involved using access to junk food to illustrate the class conflict between the patricians and plebeians in ancient Rome. In this lesson, a small, arbitrarily selected group of students (the Pats) are given the privilege of bossing around their classmates, then relaxing with a can of Pringles while the rest of the kids struggle to complete a mind-numbing task. (See January 2009 "Friends, Romans, Pringles" entry for a full explanation of the lesson.) It's a brilliant way of bringing the frustrations of the plebeians home to pre-teens (who have a strong developmental bias toward fair play), but it is also a genuine, if temporary, mind-fuck. The entire lesson is
designed to drive students crazy with real outrage, incite a rebellion born of actual frustration and force negotiations with the Pats, just like the real plebeians did in ancient Rome.
And the kids get it. Boy, do they get it. The first time I taught this lesson, I was frankly awed by its effectiveness and power. For better or worse, I have come across very few lessons that teach a complex issues as...viscerally. I wish I could take credit, but it's included our history curriculum.
I taught it again this week. Its effectiveness hasn't faded, but its psychological aspects were much more noticea
ble this year. This might be because I've been reading Naomi Klein, who writes powerfully about economic injustice and the way the world's wealthy (whether they be people, corporations or nations) are able to dominate, rob and oppress the world's poorer groups, often with their implied consent. Or rather with all of our implied consent, since the planet isn't burning like a Hollywood armageddon movie, which it should be, given the depth and violence of injustice going on out there. Last week, I finished Klein's book
No Logo (recommended by K), which traces the exploitation of sweatshop labor to Western corporations' obsession with creating brands as opposed to products; amorphous "lifestyle choices" rather than objects made by real people to be used in the real world. Money spent on pumping up brands with advertising and market research leave corporations little money for (or interest in) actual workers, factories and products. Better to outsource those old-fashioned little issues in order to focus more closely on what really matters: copyrighting Michael Jordan's jump shot or designing Barbie's dream world.
Or rather, what really matters is messing with people's minds until they believe that they're not buying Nike shoes, but athletic prowess, success and stardom. Starbucks might sell coffee, but it actually spends money on the idea of cuddling up to a $3.00 latte with a loved one on a lazy Saturday afternoon.
And it works. Boy, does it work. Our minds, being what they are, fall for it. Willingly. Happily. It's as easy as giving thoughtful, well-meaning children a can of Pringles and watching them--in the space of 10 minutes--become power-hungry patricians who refuse to give up any of their power
At the end of the day, that's what it comes down to: power. A concept that is disturbingly hard to deconstruct. As Klein points out, it's hard for people (savvy, well-educated people) to analyze the ways they are being manipulated by the media. It's perhaps even more difficult for the poor and oppressed to envision a world where they could have a say in their own lives.
In ancient Rome, it all turned out OK, and least from the perspective of a fair-minded 12 year old. The real patricians were forced to share power. The plebs staged a walk out, perhaps the first non-violent collective action in history, camped on a hill outside of the city and compelled the Pats to pay attention to their demands. In other words, justice triumphed, more or less, even if it did take over 200 years to iron out the power-sharing details of the Roman Republic.
Real life is a little more complex, but still contains meaningful lessons, as my students and I discovered this week--and as Klein reminds us on every page of her book.
This year, in one class, the Plebs refused to rebel at all. I set the exercise in motion, and no one moved. They were too "afraid" of the Pats (their friends and classmates) and were nervous about the risks involved in rebellion. They spent the time blaming themselves for not making it into the arbitrary group ("I should have worn a darker colored shirt today!") and accepting their lot in life. Two boys tried to start a movement, but backed down when no one followed them.
Now, one of my roles as teachers is to set the scene with the Pats in charge, but another role involves giving the Plebs tacit permission to rebel. As contradictory as it sounds, it works with 6th graders. But it didn't work this time. By the time I started muttering things like "There're more of you than there are of them" and "You guys shouldn't take this from those Pats," the Plebs had absorbed the mentality of the oppressed. It took about seven minutes.
When questioned about it later, kids were surprised, then chagrined. They are typically not a group of shrinking violets. When asked why they didn't rebel they said things like, "Well, the Pats were in charge./They were above us." When asked why the Pats were above them, they answered,"They got to sit on the cushions./They didn't have to work." Everyone agreed it wasn't fair. Everyone understood why the Roman plebeians rebelled. We also understood--in a very real way--why it took them so long to get up the courage to walk out and voice their demands.
The kids also may have learned (though, unfortunately, I was not on my toes enough to draw this comparison explicitly) that just because people aren't actively protesting doesn't mean injustice has been eradicated. That, of course, is Klein's point exactly. Just because Nike offers 15% more than the going wage in Indonesia, doesn't mean it's OK for a multibillion dollar corporation to pay human beings 25 cents an hour. Just because Starbucks spends a small portion of its budget on Fair Trade coffee, doesn't mean it's not also paying the environmentally disastrous megafarms throughout South America and Africa.
In my other class, the Plebs staged a classic rebellion. One kid led the charge and others followed (though, as always, a few kids kept on working). In response, the Pats in this class starting shoving chips into their mouths in anticipation of coming reforms. If they weren't going to get the Pringles, no one was going to get the Pringles. After we had settled the labor dispute (equal work, equal access to what was left of the Pringles), and I'd come clean on the point of the lesson, the kids who had been the Pats felt more than a little guilty. "I don't know what got into me," said a girl, who is normally so approachable and friendly that she is chosen to orient new students to the school. "It was like I became a different person."
We talked about how hard it is for people in power to give it up. If even Guilty Girl could morph into a Pringle-hogging Pat, we could all imagine how the real patricians might have reacted when the plebeians first voiced their demands.
Although the two classes acted very differently this time around (and very differently than last year's students), my refrain was the same to both sets of kids: Yes, you may have done things you're not proud of, but next time you are confronted by a situation like this, what will you do differently?
Teacher, instruct thyself! Klein's book and both classes this year taught me how powerful an exercise like this is, and how many different lessons it has for 12 year olds studying history, but also for all of us in the world today. What I will do differently the next time I teach this lesson (and I will teach it again--it is way too good), is attempt to draw more explicit parallels to our modern lives. History can provide us all, even 6th graders, with such useful tools. Rather than having a class discussion and moving on (as we did this week), there are ways of making this lesson sink in beyond the Pringle level.
And before anyone thinks I'm pushing an agenda on kids (my own or Klein's) let me say that
not drawing these parallels is also pushing an agenda, one that the Gap and, sadly, most Western governments would prefer not be made. Because it's glaringly obvious once the emotions calm down and the extra can of Pringles appears that everyone can share: justice
can be achieved, but that it takes a concerted effort, a lot of time, a 12 year old's sense of fair play and unwavering understanding that power always, always, always corrupts--even the nicest girl in class.
History provides us with such useful tools. These are lessons we all need to keep in mind.
