Today, grade 6 and i looked at the historic political leader as criminal. We began with a discussion on Pistorius being guilty of culpable homicide rather than premeditated murder. We looked at homme and cide and other cide words and then they took an intelligent guess at the word premeditated and we talked of intentions in crimes of passion and cold blooded murders. Then we spoke of assassinations, honour killings and community values in harakiri, kamikaze and jauhar and how these differed from individual suicides. What about soldiers? Were they not cold blooded murderers. So we went into what alternatives a country that was being attacked had? Fully engaged. I never planned any of this. It grew itself. :) Political criminals were culpable of the deaths of millions. Who were they? So they named Hitler and Osama bin Laden. They had never heard of Stalin or Pol Pot or Mao. So an experiment that I often tell teachers to conduct was performed on my unsuspecting class. Instead of telling them anything, I gave them handouts on all these guys. Some got a world war, others got the Nigerian civil War. In groups, they did a who, where, when, why, what happened, how did it end - parameters for a quick note making exercise. Then they were asked to use these notes to either make skits, or write lectures, or make newspaper headlines or television presentations, or tell the story in as notes or letters written by the characters. Struggled they did. with the vocabulary, the salience of information, to cut the umbilical cord of the text and say it in their own words. But they did. Now they all have a fair idea of some of the biggest criminals and the causes and consequence of genocides in history. You dont need to know more than that at 11? I am thrilled they worked on their own with minimal help. Every time I teach, I learn something about children - their abilities, and challenges - and validate my own abstract theories to a point of concrete confidence.
Posted on: Mon, 15 Sep 2014 16:17:04 +0000