Welcome to my last post of humanities 10. It’s definitely been a exciting and great journey and I’ve learned a ton of new and amazing things. Though, out of all the units this year, I can say that I learned the most, and had the opportunity to apply the most skills into, this unit.
We started our adventure by first being pitched the projects and main ideas. We were told that we had would be reading the book Lord of the Flies, a very famous book that I had never heard about. As well as reading the book we would be learning about Canada’s political system, how to debate, and how all these topics relate to the driving question: How do we organize ourselves?
Our first assignment was to split the class up into six groups of students that shared equal strengths and weaknesses. We all started by grouping at the front of the class and writing names on the whiteboard. The room quickly became loud and chaotic and many of my peers. voices where not being heard behind the blanket of noise. As a result of this, some students stepped up and started to take leadership roles. A talking stick was assigned, and our rule was whoever held the talking stick got to speak and make suggestions. Once everyone calmed down, and we had some rules of peace and order installed, the team choosing process quickly sped up. We made sure everyone got a say in what group they were placed in, and before we knew it we had 6 groups of students which everyone agreed on. As everyone quickly flushed out of the front of the classrooms and took their seats with their new groups, I sat down with Sam, Spencer, and Sydney. I was happy with my group, and I think we all had different skills that we could contribute to the unit. At the end of class we wrote a reflection on the assignment, this was mine:
After everyone was settled and finished their reflections we were told that these teams were going to be competing in a tournament of wit, intelligence, and teamwork. Throughout the unit we would be awarded posts on assignments, participation, and teamwork. There were also ways we could lose points, such as being late to class. We all had to make sure we were trying our best throughout the whole unit.
The book:
This unit had three main parts to it, the book (Lord of the Flies), Politics and Canadian government, and the debate. I’m going to start off by talking about the book.
After creating our groups and having some time to learn about each other’s skills we were assigned the main activity for the unit. For the next 3 weeks we would be reading Lord of the Flies, a book written by William Golding. Every week each group would be given assignments and be tested on their understanding of the book. Some of the assignment included the character chart and the symbol chart:
These two assignments not only tested my knowledge on the book and my ability to interpret the text, but they helped me remember important aspects of the book for future tests. The tests, additionally, helped me stay on task with my reading. Each week we had to read up to a certain chapter to understand and answer the questions on the tests. We were taught earlier in the year, when we were reading Unbroken, that highlighting and writing down important parts of the text would help us remember and understand the book better. I used this skill throughout the weeks of LOTF to help prepare me for the tests.
The last big part of the book portion of the unit was the concept journals. First, we were introduced to six main concepts that could be seen throughout the book.
• Power and Authority
• Humanity and Inhumanity
• Violence and Destruction
• Human nature
• Civilization and Savagery
• Individualism and Community
To learn more about the concepts we made posters about the topics and went around the class writing about real-life examples on each page.
Our next activity was to choose some of the concepts and write paragraphs about them using examples from our learning throughout the year. For the first paragraph I chose to write about whether there is such a thing as true selflessness and how it relates to human nature. I really enjoyed writing the paragraph because I could write it about my beliefs and I could make it personalized. When I handed it in and received feedback I was told to use stronger evidence from the material that we have learned from the year. I used this information to write my second Concept Journal on the statement: Be it resolved that in extreme situations, morals must be sacrificed. I really liked my second journal and I feel like I implemented my feedback to create a stronger argument.
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Reading Lord of the Flies was a really interesting experience. It was an amazing read and I ended up learning a lot about human nature as it is portrayed through the characters. The book also had some very advanced literature and it taught me a lot about how to formulate sentences better.
The Debate:
Soon after finishing the Concept Journals we started to transition into the Debating section of the unit. We used the concepts from the book to create topic statements and then each group got to choose which one they would like to debate about. My group and I wanted to talk about the concept of Power and Authority, so we chose the statement: Be is resolved that power leads to corruption. We were given the opposition side of the debate trying to prove that power doesn’t lead to corruption. I was happy to be on the “against” side of the debate, as I feel like what we were arguing for was true.
First we had to actually learn how to debate and how to speak in front of an audience. We watched a very informative video that explained the seven key components of public speaking. The most important note that I took away from the video is that you should never give a speech, instead have a conversation where you connect to the audience. If you are passionate about the topic and you share from the heart people will not only understand you better but appreciate your work more. Public speaking is a skill that I have been working on to improve throughout the whole year. I mentioned my drive to try to improve it in my TPOL post. Learning ways to be a better public speaker boosted my confidence for the debate and helped me move closer to completing my goal.
One of the last assignments we did as a class to help us prepare was called Pass The Buck. In this activity, one person in a group was given the “buck”. The person with the Buck would start talking about a topic that was important to them and then said person would pass the buck around the table until everyone had added something to the topic. This helped us formulate ideas on the spot, and it helped us prepare for the rebuttal section of the debate. Passing the Buck around the class reminded me of the Conch in the Lord of the Flies because only the person holding it could speak.
Our next step was to do research on the topic. We started by pulling out all of our prior knowledge of power and authority. First, we began looking at our studies on WWII. We figured that our opponents would use Hitler as their main points for corruption, so we tried formulating arguments against his savage rule. Sam, came up with a very clever statement that we would use throughout our debate: Power does not corrupt, corrupt people abuse power. Hitler is an example of this because he was already corrupt from the beginning} he wrote his book Mein Kampf showing all his corrupt visions prior to gaining any real power. We also used examples from Lord of the flies and other good and evil powers throughout history. Once we had all of our research and main points we began planning our roles in the debate. Sam and I would do the opening statement, Spencer and Sydney would do the rebuttal and Sam and Sydney would conclude the argument. Now it was time for the debate..
After 15 minutes of intense debating, we were finally done. I was proud of how well my team and I performed and I think we all worked together really well. I was especially proud of how well we all came together in the rebuttal section of the debate and argued against all of the other teams’ points. I still feel like I need to work on my speaking skills though as I began to freeze up and become shaky. In the end our teachers and classmates had a vote, and my team came out victorious!
This was my Debate:
Politics and Canadian Government:
As we continue the read the book we were introduced to our next main topic: Politics and Government. First we learned about the six main forms of government and we researched examples for each:
Theocracy
Civil leaders have connections to the people through religion or beliefs
Use religious laws for the majority of their laws
Run by the head of the church or faith
If a law is broken it is punishable by death
Example: Saudi Arabia
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Oligarchy
Maintain power through relationships with each other – a small group of individuals is in charge
They don’t need to worry about what is going on in the rest of society so they can focus on their own problems and comfort
Elections are fixed so that those in power remain there
Example: Soviet Union
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Anarchy
Example: Somalia
The belief where people think that the government is harmful to the society so individual factions fight any organized government, as well as each other
Can happen after civil wars and collapse of social order
No one person in charge
There are no rules – crime rates higher – can do whatever they want
Not a sustainable way to run a country
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Monarchy
Example: England
King or queen is the head of state
Oldest form of government in the United Kingdom
Born into position
Doesn’t mean they are fit to lead – born into power
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Democracy
Political equality of all citizens
No one can be discriminated against
Democracy serves the general public’s interests
It can promote corruption through votes
Example: United States – Donald Trump
After we had gained a broad overview of the governments in the world we started to focus in on the government in Canada. First, we began looking at the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We learned a lot about the different rules that the charter enforces and about how Canada is run as a country. I was surprised to see how lenient Canada was with their rules and how much different we run than our neighbor, the USA. One thing in particular that made me think of this was the Mobility Rights section in the charter. It says that every citizen has the right to enter, remain in, and leave Canada when they want to.
Then we discussed the electoral system in Canada. To elect the candidates into power we use the First-Past-The-Post System, we were given a really cool illustration that explains this process:
In British Columbia, as of right now, we have a Minority Government. This means the governing party that won the election has the most seats but still has less than half the total. This is a problem because although the one party won the election and has the most seats in parliament other lesser parties can team up and have a large influence on the government.
This was such a crazy unit, and it was really important to me because I grew a ton as a learner throughout the whole process. Learning how to communicate not only within my group but also with my class through debates, activities, and now with the world through this blog has been an awesome experience. I have learned so much on how to speak publicly and how to formulate ideas on the spot, and I am really excited to work on this skill for the rest of my life.
Thanks for reading!
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