We both tend to be lecturers (sage on the stage, with class discussion following), but these days, it's good to be more interactive. Last week his Situational Ethics class was supposed to discuss international trade. How to make that interactive?
We thought about some TED talks. We thought about reading international treaties. But then I remembered an exercise from the long ago days of youth groups, an exercise designed to teach us about world hunger. In that exercise, we divided into groups and were given popcorn. Some groups were given more than they needed, some less, and some had other resources; I have a memory of pennies. What would each group do? How would they negotiate? Could we get to a point where everyone had what they needed?
It's an exercise that stuck with me, obviously. Here I am, decades later, suggesting it.
So, I used that idea as an inspiration for a different kind of classroom exercise. I would divide the class into groups and give them items representing wealth (pennies), weapons (matches, which my spouse lit and blew out so that there would be no risk of mishap), manufacturing resources (pieces of cloth), food (popcorn), and natural resources (shells and rocks). Each group would represent a country, and each would have some of what they needed, but not all of what they needed, and each group except one would have excess resources of some type.
He gave them 20 minutes to analyze the situation and to strategize. And then it was time to negotiate.
He says it went well, although he was somewhat disappointed that they didn't immediately make larger connections to the philosophers that they'd been studying. But that might happen, if not immediately then later. And it might help them understand trade relations in a way that they hadn't before.
I think back to my own high school years. I remember in a Civics class we pretended we were members of Congress. We created bills and worked to get them passed. It taught me more about the way that government works than anything I've done before or since.
Because I like the idea of this blog being a resource, let me see if I can post the curriculum that we created. I have a vision of it being a flexible assignment. For example, I talked to a friend who teaches in a Hospitality program. We thought about how we could adapt the process, what the items would represent: money, food, staffing, . . .
I won't go through and standardize the spacing and type font--that would take more time than I have.
I'd be interested in hearing about result across varying curriculums. I remember once doing something similar in a Composition class and having students write about what they learned about the experience. I liked it for a variety of reasons: it was something that they hadn't experienced before, and the writing assignment was fairly plagiarism proof.
Trade
Negotiation Simulation
Popcorn
represents crops/food
Penny
represents wealth in the treasury
Match
represents weapons
Seashell/rock
represents natural resources
Piece
of cloth = ability to manufacture cheaply what the rest of the world
wants/needs
Penny: 30 pennies
Match
: 30 matches
Seashell: 10 shells
Piece
of cloth: 1
Country
2 (European counterpart)
Popcorn: 20 kernels
Penny: 20 pennies
Match
: 25 matches
Seashell: 8 shells
Piece
of cloth: 1
Popcorn: 2 kernels
Penny: 2 pennies
Match
: 0 matches
Seashell: 25 shells
Piece
of cloth: 0
Popcorn: 15 kernels
Penny: 30 pennies
Match
: 2 matches
Seashell: 2 shells
Piece
of cloth: 20
Give the groups 10-20 minutes to strategize how they’ll
get what they need/want from other countries.
Then have them come together to negotiate. See what happens.
Should you have more time: You could have something happen: a famine, that wipes out the food resources
of some countries (popcorn taken away), a recession (pennies taken away), a
natural resource that finds new use in manufacturing (shells given)—how do
outside factors like these influence negotiations?
Ask them what they learned. Ask them to discuss which country represents
which real world counterpart—only teacher has the information which will be
revealed at this point.
The
following pages can be given to the groups—perhaps each group only gets its own
sheet—or is it more realistic that they would know these facts about each
other?
Country
1
Needs:
--Can’t
produce goods cheaply enough to get all citizens all the consumer goods that
they want
--Because
of stability and wealth of country, Country 1 worries about becoming a target.
--Many
citizens in this country worry about the poverty that they see in other
nations.
A
wide variety—every kind of person with every kind of skill level and
educational background.
Penny
represents wealth in the treasury
Match
represents weapons
Seashell
represents natural resources
Piece
of cloth = ability to manufacture cheaply what the rest of the world
wants/needs
----------------------------------------------------------------
Country
2
Needs:
Resources
Penny
represents wealth in the treasury
Match
represents weapons
Seashell
represents natural resources
Piece
of cloth = ability to manufacture cheaply what the rest of the world
wants/needs
Population:
Young
population—lots and lots and lots of people.
They don’t have as much school education as the rest of the countries,
but they are creative thinkers and problem solvers.
Popcorn
represents crops/food
Penny
represents wealth in the treasury
Match
represents weapons
Seashell
represents natural resources
Piece
of cloth = ability to manufacture cheaply what the rest of the world
wants/needs
-----------------------------------------------
Popcorn
represents crops/food
Penny
represents wealth in the treasury
Match
represents weapons
Seashell
represents natural resources
Piece
of cloth = ability to manufacture cheaply what the rest of the world
wants/needs
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