After our successful and passionate discussion about the branches of government (who knew?!), we tried out another seminar. The reason why these can be so powerful is that there is no right or wrong answer! What it does do is to let the children have some time to think and reflect about what they are saying- and sometimes even get a little change of heart. That's just what happened in this seminar.
For this seminar we posted four provocation statements around the room. I left them up for the week prior so the children had some time to think about them and reflect on which spoke to them.
They were:
Everyone's opinion counts.
The government is not responsible for everyone.
It's okay for some people to be very rich-they must have worked very hard.
The ones who make the rules are the most important people.
Funnily enough there were 30 children who felt that the most true statement was "Everyone's opinion counts." and only two that felt "The government is not responsible for everyone." So instead of starting with why you chose such and such. I simply started with one that was not chosen and asked them why no one chose that- is it not also true? That was it folks- the rest was a 30 minutes (no kidding) discussion as to what is true and why they felt that way. I had a few change their minds at the end and we did some reflecting later about how what we believe influences the way we view the role of government. Ahhh-mazing!!!!
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