Dictatorship Day simulation (in a 6th grade classroom)
Posted: Fri Oct 31, 2014 5:08 pm
Dan Simmons is a writer who has won awards in multiple genres (SF/Fantasy, horror, mystery) and when he was a teacher he conducted this experiment one day a year for many years. I believe he considers himself a JFK liberal. He posted the below and then "VDH Our Make it up world" following the below.
http://forum.dansimmons.com/ubbthreads/ ... Post157631
Dan S. comments:
We need to re-read Orwell's 1984. Facts are what the government SAYS they are. War is Peace. Love is Hate. Old "facts" that are no longer politically useful to the regime are literally put down the Memory Hole while old newspapers are rewritten, photos of old Heroes of the Revolution are airbrushed out and cease to exist.
When I taught sixth-graders my one-day DICTATORSHIP DAY SIMULATION at the end of eight weeks (of curriculum I'd written and created) my 11- and 12-year olds had to learn pages of political dictum before noon because the dreaded POLITICAL OFFICER was coming sometime that afternoon to quiz them. Kids who still hadn't mastered their basic multiplication tables after 4 years could give the right memorized answers in a 5-page single-spaced catechism of THE STATE KNOWS BEST political litany.
All around the classroom were photographs of OUR GLORIOUS LEADER (The Hero of the Revolution) -- Kurt Vonnegut -- and at least five times an hour we all stood rigidly with our fists over our heart as the Revolutionary Anthem ("Pomp and Circumstance") played. Girls wore blue skirts, white blouses, and the red kerchiefs of the Revolutionary Girl Guides. Boys were supposed to wear the white dress shirts and red(dish) ties of the Future Military Male Guides (but every year I taught this since the early 1970's, fewer and fewer boys had a white dress shirt -- many came to Dictatorship Simulation Day wearing their father's wrinkled white shirts. By the end of my doing this annual simulation, NO boys knew how to tie a tie.)
No kids giggled. No kids titered. By 10 a.m. we LIVED IN a state ruled by OUR GLORIOUS LEADER who was always right. I did exercises where the class had to shout out that a black panel is white and a white one black. Reality was what the STATE and OUR GLORIOUS LEADER dictated was reality.
I'd love to report that there were hold-outs and counter-revolutionaries in the classes over 18 years of my teaching, but in truth everone, even the strongest, smartest students, caved within one school day. Individual work and grades no longer existed. Each row of kids was now a CHAIN and anyone's failure meant everyone in that chain's failure.
When I shouted (the only time I ever shouted in my classes, ever) out the question -- "How strong is our CHAIN?" -- the response was an immediate united roar -- "A CHAIN IS ONLY AS STRONG AS ITS WEAKEST LINK!!!" I'd snap back -- "How many weak links can we have" Again the instant roar -- "OUR CHAIN CAN HAVE NO WEAKEST LINK!!!"
Kids who'd had problems in school for years loved the Dictatorship Simulation Day. They were rewarded for spying on and squealing on their classmates who were whispering or writing things CONTRARY TO THE TRUTHS OF THE REVOLUTION AND OF OUR GLORIOUS LEADER. The biggest rats were made into enforcement squads -- each carrying a swagger stick I'd made -- who gave orders and made sure that the TRUTHS OF THE REVOLUTION were obeyed without question.
By early afternoon, before the feard Political Leader's unscheduled appearance, I'd moved to exercises where the students had to affirm their allegiance to the STATE and to OUR GLORIOUS LEADER over any closeness to family or parents. Stick figures on the chalkboard (it was that long ago) showed parents holding hands and the mother or father holding hands with one of the kids (who held hands with the other kids.) There were different sized families represented.
One by one, as their names "Citizen ______" were called, the student had to come up, erase the joined hands with the parent(s), and vowed that their only true love and loyalty were to the GLORIOUS LEADER (a poster of Kurt Vonnegut was above all the stick drawings and after the student had erased his or her holding hands with parents, and even with sibings, they were given a bigger, wider piece of colored chalk to draw a line between them up to the image of OUR GLORIOUS LEADER.
At this point, a few students tried to hold out. Such revolts didn't last long, but I loved and admired the very few kids who tried. All the rest of us had school lunches delivered and the kids ate in their Loyal Citizen Chain group. The few rebels had to sit on the floor under his or her table (no desks in my classrooms) and eat alone. When they finally broke and came up front to erase the connection with their families and show their loyalty only to OUR GLORIOUS LEADER, all the other kids were allowed to applaud and hug the former holdout.
Then, sometime past 2 p.m., the POLITICAL OFFICER arrived to test the kids on their Political Education. I always used district psychologists for Political Officers -- an adult the kids didn't know. It was up to the psychologist to decide how he or she would dress as a REPRESENTATIVE OF OUR GLORIOUS LEADER. My brother-in-law Jim was a school psychologist (not for our school) and he just wore a suit with a red tie. His voice, when quizzing the kids on their political litanies, was soft and reassuring. The kids were still trembling. When someone made a mistake, Jim's voice turned flat and deadly as he snapped the question to another member of the failed Citizen's chain.
One psychologist I'd known for years showed up in a full Castro military uniform, complete with Castro cap and paratrooper boots with his uniform pants tucked into them, and he was smoking a cigar! (I had to get special permission from the district superintendent for that cigar, but it was the cigar that put the kids over the edge. It's no friggin' simulation if the military Political Officer is smoking a cigar!!!
The students stood at attention with their fists over their hearts the entire time the feared Political Officer snapped political litany questions at them. When he (rarely) said, "Very good, Citizen" the 6th grader's knees grew wobbly and one boy wept with relief.
The Political Officer would then join us, fist over his uniformed heart, in listening to the Anthem of the Glorious Revolution annd then give one last exhortation to the quivering Citizens about their importance in upholding the Power of the State, the Truths of the Revolution, and the total control of Our Glorious Leader, and then he left. I would say "Sit down, Citizens" and the kids -- invariably -- collapsed into their chairs.
On the last year I did this culminating simulation after the 8 weeks of study of totalitarian societies, one boy -- our biggest and toughest boy, someone who should have been in 8th grade by now rather than 6th -- locked his knees during his quivering at-attention, listening-to-the-Political-Officer with his fist over his heart, and passed out when the Political Officer turned the anthem on at the record player.
Luckily, I was there and caught him on the way there before he hit anything. He was out for fifteen seconds or more.
At that point, about 90 minutes before the end of the school day, the simulation always ended and we had -- as we did after every simyulation -- our "debriefing". Ties were loosened, scarves removed, our red armbands (which the Political Officer also had been wearing) tossed away, and we talked, And talked. And talked.
The most common and, to me, disturbing response to me, every year, was how many of the rank and file 6th Graders had LOVED being so regimented and part of something so much larger than themselves. The usually unhappiest tough kids and slow learners who, because of their informing on classmates, had become CHAIN LEADERS, frequently wept and said something to the effect, "I was HAPPY today! I was SOMEBODY IMPORTANT today!"
I've pondered that for years.
The smartest kids were the angriest at what they'd been through, and he first to note the connections to the totalitaran states and iedologies we'd been studying for weeks, but even they, at the end of the simulation, came slowly out of character as if they were still dreaming, still part of something bigger and more important than themselves.
I ponder that as well.
When words are totally separated from facts and reality, anything is possible.
Dan S
http://forum.dansimmons.com/ubbthreads/ ... Post157631
Dan S. comments:
We need to re-read Orwell's 1984. Facts are what the government SAYS they are. War is Peace. Love is Hate. Old "facts" that are no longer politically useful to the regime are literally put down the Memory Hole while old newspapers are rewritten, photos of old Heroes of the Revolution are airbrushed out and cease to exist.
When I taught sixth-graders my one-day DICTATORSHIP DAY SIMULATION at the end of eight weeks (of curriculum I'd written and created) my 11- and 12-year olds had to learn pages of political dictum before noon because the dreaded POLITICAL OFFICER was coming sometime that afternoon to quiz them. Kids who still hadn't mastered their basic multiplication tables after 4 years could give the right memorized answers in a 5-page single-spaced catechism of THE STATE KNOWS BEST political litany.
All around the classroom were photographs of OUR GLORIOUS LEADER (The Hero of the Revolution) -- Kurt Vonnegut -- and at least five times an hour we all stood rigidly with our fists over our heart as the Revolutionary Anthem ("Pomp and Circumstance") played. Girls wore blue skirts, white blouses, and the red kerchiefs of the Revolutionary Girl Guides. Boys were supposed to wear the white dress shirts and red(dish) ties of the Future Military Male Guides (but every year I taught this since the early 1970's, fewer and fewer boys had a white dress shirt -- many came to Dictatorship Simulation Day wearing their father's wrinkled white shirts. By the end of my doing this annual simulation, NO boys knew how to tie a tie.)
No kids giggled. No kids titered. By 10 a.m. we LIVED IN a state ruled by OUR GLORIOUS LEADER who was always right. I did exercises where the class had to shout out that a black panel is white and a white one black. Reality was what the STATE and OUR GLORIOUS LEADER dictated was reality.
I'd love to report that there were hold-outs and counter-revolutionaries in the classes over 18 years of my teaching, but in truth everone, even the strongest, smartest students, caved within one school day. Individual work and grades no longer existed. Each row of kids was now a CHAIN and anyone's failure meant everyone in that chain's failure.
When I shouted (the only time I ever shouted in my classes, ever) out the question -- "How strong is our CHAIN?" -- the response was an immediate united roar -- "A CHAIN IS ONLY AS STRONG AS ITS WEAKEST LINK!!!" I'd snap back -- "How many weak links can we have" Again the instant roar -- "OUR CHAIN CAN HAVE NO WEAKEST LINK!!!"
Kids who'd had problems in school for years loved the Dictatorship Simulation Day. They were rewarded for spying on and squealing on their classmates who were whispering or writing things CONTRARY TO THE TRUTHS OF THE REVOLUTION AND OF OUR GLORIOUS LEADER. The biggest rats were made into enforcement squads -- each carrying a swagger stick I'd made -- who gave orders and made sure that the TRUTHS OF THE REVOLUTION were obeyed without question.
By early afternoon, before the feard Political Leader's unscheduled appearance, I'd moved to exercises where the students had to affirm their allegiance to the STATE and to OUR GLORIOUS LEADER over any closeness to family or parents. Stick figures on the chalkboard (it was that long ago) showed parents holding hands and the mother or father holding hands with one of the kids (who held hands with the other kids.) There were different sized families represented.
One by one, as their names "Citizen ______" were called, the student had to come up, erase the joined hands with the parent(s), and vowed that their only true love and loyalty were to the GLORIOUS LEADER (a poster of Kurt Vonnegut was above all the stick drawings and after the student had erased his or her holding hands with parents, and even with sibings, they were given a bigger, wider piece of colored chalk to draw a line between them up to the image of OUR GLORIOUS LEADER.
At this point, a few students tried to hold out. Such revolts didn't last long, but I loved and admired the very few kids who tried. All the rest of us had school lunches delivered and the kids ate in their Loyal Citizen Chain group. The few rebels had to sit on the floor under his or her table (no desks in my classrooms) and eat alone. When they finally broke and came up front to erase the connection with their families and show their loyalty only to OUR GLORIOUS LEADER, all the other kids were allowed to applaud and hug the former holdout.
Then, sometime past 2 p.m., the POLITICAL OFFICER arrived to test the kids on their Political Education. I always used district psychologists for Political Officers -- an adult the kids didn't know. It was up to the psychologist to decide how he or she would dress as a REPRESENTATIVE OF OUR GLORIOUS LEADER. My brother-in-law Jim was a school psychologist (not for our school) and he just wore a suit with a red tie. His voice, when quizzing the kids on their political litanies, was soft and reassuring. The kids were still trembling. When someone made a mistake, Jim's voice turned flat and deadly as he snapped the question to another member of the failed Citizen's chain.
One psychologist I'd known for years showed up in a full Castro military uniform, complete with Castro cap and paratrooper boots with his uniform pants tucked into them, and he was smoking a cigar! (I had to get special permission from the district superintendent for that cigar, but it was the cigar that put the kids over the edge. It's no friggin' simulation if the military Political Officer is smoking a cigar!!!
The students stood at attention with their fists over their hearts the entire time the feared Political Officer snapped political litany questions at them. When he (rarely) said, "Very good, Citizen" the 6th grader's knees grew wobbly and one boy wept with relief.
The Political Officer would then join us, fist over his uniformed heart, in listening to the Anthem of the Glorious Revolution annd then give one last exhortation to the quivering Citizens about their importance in upholding the Power of the State, the Truths of the Revolution, and the total control of Our Glorious Leader, and then he left. I would say "Sit down, Citizens" and the kids -- invariably -- collapsed into their chairs.
On the last year I did this culminating simulation after the 8 weeks of study of totalitarian societies, one boy -- our biggest and toughest boy, someone who should have been in 8th grade by now rather than 6th -- locked his knees during his quivering at-attention, listening-to-the-Political-Officer with his fist over his heart, and passed out when the Political Officer turned the anthem on at the record player.
Luckily, I was there and caught him on the way there before he hit anything. He was out for fifteen seconds or more.
At that point, about 90 minutes before the end of the school day, the simulation always ended and we had -- as we did after every simyulation -- our "debriefing". Ties were loosened, scarves removed, our red armbands (which the Political Officer also had been wearing) tossed away, and we talked, And talked. And talked.
The most common and, to me, disturbing response to me, every year, was how many of the rank and file 6th Graders had LOVED being so regimented and part of something so much larger than themselves. The usually unhappiest tough kids and slow learners who, because of their informing on classmates, had become CHAIN LEADERS, frequently wept and said something to the effect, "I was HAPPY today! I was SOMEBODY IMPORTANT today!"
I've pondered that for years.
The smartest kids were the angriest at what they'd been through, and he first to note the connections to the totalitaran states and iedologies we'd been studying for weeks, but even they, at the end of the simulation, came slowly out of character as if they were still dreaming, still part of something bigger and more important than themselves.
I ponder that as well.
When words are totally separated from facts and reality, anything is possible.
Dan S