2020-06-09 19:31:58 ¶ ● ⬀ ⬈

lillian-sunshine:

> hookedonafeeeling:

> > vansnailismylife:

> > > solarmorrigan:

> > > > So. 10th grade English class. We all come in one morning to find a balloon and a perfectly sharpened pencil on each of our desks. No instructions, no explanation, which is strange, because our teacher is meticulous about that sort of thing. A couple of people try to ask her and she says we’ll get to it. She takes role and then announces that she needs to go to the copy room and she’ll be back in a couple of minutes

> > > > Kinda unorthodox, but no one is complaining because this is advanced English and the teacher usually goes kinda hard. So, y’know. Brief respite. We all sit and chat; one of the boys teasingly steals a girl’s balloon, but gives it back to her easily enough; it’s quiet and kind of a nice break. Then the teacher comes back, stops in the doorway, and just stares at us

> > > > After a long moment, she says, confused, “You didn’t pop the balloons.”

> > > > To which one of the guys about two rows over exclaims, “We’re allowed to pop them?” and immediately turns around and stabs his friend’s balloon with the pencil

> > > > There is a vicious revenge balloon-stabbing, and a few more people pop seatmates’ balloons or their own, and the whole time the teacher is just shaking her head. “I can’t believe you didn’t pop your balloons.”

> > > > Apparently we were starting Lord of the Flies that day and she wanted to demonstrate the basic concept of kids turning on each other when there are no authority figures present and it was basically my favorite failed social experiment ever

> > > Back in my 10th grade we did a similar things around Lord of the Flies, where we had a test scheduled for that day, and when we walked in, the teacher took role by looking through the window of the door and never entered the classroom. On the board were three tasks written and the teacher had brought in donuts. At first we all sat around and waited for the teacher to come in, but eventually we just started tackling the list of tasks. Task 1- the test. Everybody took it silently, no one cheated, everyone turned it in and we went on to Task Two: tidy up the room. So we did, we split into a couple groups and each one cleaned an area of the room. Task Three: Hand out the donuts. There were 12 donuts, and 30 of us. So we split the donuts into thirds, each took a third, and left the extras for the teacher. After this, the teacher came in absolutely FUMING. She was so upset we had followed all the rules and completed the tasks. Apparently she had been texting kids telling them to start some chaos but they all ignored it because they were too nice. She tried to dock our grades for not going absolutely wild because it meant her class didn’t get the point across

> > That’s because lord of the flies isn’t representative of humanity it’s representative of rich white male shitheads

> Also you can’t recreate a breakdown of society in a 45 minute school period??? Like all these children knew that the teacher’s authority was still present even if the teacher was absent. When she got back if they were disobedient they all knew there would be consequences. A REAL Innovator would have just not showed up for class for 2 weeks

OK Lemme tell you about my (old) school’s LOTF’s introductory lesson:

Our 9th grade teacher, instead of trying to prove that we could become chaotic if we don’t have some form of authority, decided to prove that we wouldn’t be able to survive on a deserted island. So she divided us up into groups of 3 and handed us a sheet of questions on island survival. She said we could only use whatever items we brought to school with us to help us survive.

BUT THE THING IS the other class was a bit ahead of us, and one of my friends warned me about this project. So the night before I researched island survival, and brought all necessary things to school with me (flashlights with extra batteries, first aid kits,…). Another person in my group had a twin sister in the other class and also came prepared. So our group ended up having a very organized list of things we’d use to survive, plus all the survival questions answered correctly.

These results were not what our teacher was hoping for.