5th Grade Democracy, 101

A long time ago, I attended a small private Christian school in Iowa. Back then, we were still living in a Cold War, if you can believe it, so our teachers colluded with the principal to teach us a “lesson” about eternal life, whether we wanted to end up in heaven or hell. To illustrate this lesson during chapel one day, one of our teachers rushed in from the back and whispered something in the principal’s ear while he was preaching. The principal composed himself and then proceeded to tell us, the kids, that Russia had just launched a nuclear weapon and it was, or may be, heading toward the American Midwest. There wasn’t much time to think about calling home or saying goodbye. Just a few minutes to think about our souls. What I remember most about that moment was the little girl crying behind me. And the fact that I’m telling you this now, more than 30 years after it happened, means that what they did had a lasting impact, but not in a good way. Making kids cry in order to teach a lesson, any lesson… well, it doesn’t sit well with me. Push them, yes. Bring out the best in them, of course, even as it might cause them some necessary anxiety. But taking them past the breaking point, I try to avoid, best I can.

Fast forward.

Just before Thanksgiving this year, I was reading a book about The Stamp Act (because of course I was) and came up with an idea and a plan for our fifth grade social studies unit, shared across three classes, then set up some slides to help introduce our kids to what otherwise might be, for them and for most people, an extremely boring part of history, that time when the British Parliament decided they would raise revenue for colonial safety by taxing them, first, on molasses (sugar) and then, second, on paper goods. My plan was simply this: have the kids agree that they support school safety (which they did), that they support their teachers (which they did), then explain to them that we, their teachers, have an idea about how they, the students, could help us raise money to help pay for that added boost of school security (which they were on board with). And so it began. We had the kids spread out around the room, remove from their backpacks every book, notebook, every loose piece of paper, and every miscellaneous paper product, then had them tally the numbers and tack on a decimal value to each item. They’ve become experts on decimals in fifth grade, so it was a perfect supplement. However, when all was totaled up, this would be their weekly student paper tax, due every Monday, and failure to pay that tax might lead to a lower grade.

Ouch, right?

In advance of what we predicted would be an angry bunch of kids, we sent emails home to parents, asking them to “play along” for a night, letting the kids work through their emotions on the subject. And to be fair, we got a ton of parent support, lots of encouraging emails and “love it” praise from our admin, which means there wasn’t anything demonstrably wrong with letting it fester overnight, with letting our kids go home thinking about it. But you have to know that this was not my original plan. I had originally planned to wrap up the “this isn’t real” conversation in the last five minutes of the day when it was introduced. The decision to let it fester was added on while I was off campus, relaxing in North Carolina a few days ahead of Thanksgiving break. When I discovered this was the new plan, I resisted initially, because I wasn’t sure what might go wrong if it extended past the school day, because I couldn’t help but remember that little girl in chapel. I felt like there might be tears. And that was gonna absolutely break my heart. But I played along, because plans evolve all the time and that’s okay, because I felt like it might help support a protest unit being taught in language arts. All good things. All beneficial for growing citizens to understand and appreciate.

So wouldn’t you know it, on the afternoon of our introductory lesson, within 30 minutes of students leaving, we had two kids, two sets of parents with broken down children, crying because they knew their parents didn’t have a lot of money to work with, or because they were terrified the failure to pay might drop their grade, and didn’t know how to work through that emotion. But then there were two more kids, this afternoon, who fell apart in my room when they learned it was all part of a lesson, that the student paper tax wasn’t real, because they felt stupid and embarrassed, because they spent all this time working to build posters and prepare a protest and now it all just felt ridiculous, like they had gotten worked up over nothing.

Needless to say, remembering that little girl in chapel, I sat down with every child who had cried, and thanked them for everything they put into this protest, for all the energy they had given, telling them that otherwise boring story of The Stamp Act, and reminding them that when people get upset about things, rightly or wrongly, they react, and that in the case of the colonists, America won and England lost. I told them that their concerns were valid, and I even apologized to each of them, individually, for being the cause of their anxiety. And then the class celebrated them, cheering, especially, the ones who had worked so hard to organize their time and their recess to stand up for what they believed, doing such a fantastic job that they managed to bring younger kids into the protest, kids who had no idea what they were supposed to be upset about. Every child who felt broken was built back up.

Not every lesson goes according to plan, but this one, I hope, for all the tears and all the support we saw, will remind them that this is America, and in America, there is no such thing as a wasted voice.

Welcome to 5th Grade Democracy 101.