Democracy and Inequality: Challenges and Possible Solutions

Classroom Activities

Unit Intro

The unit introduction will revolve around four key questions:

1. What is a democracy?
2. Who does a democracy work for?
3. Who does a democracy not work for?
4. Does democracy work for you?

Activity #1: Game Theory

Before students can think about an activist approach, they need preliminary knowledge on how people make decisions within systems.To this end, my students will participate in a few game theory simulations. Drixit writes, “Game theory starts with an unfair advantage over most other scientific subjects—it is applicable to numerous interesting and thought-provoking aspects of decision making in economics, business, politics, social interactions, and indeed to much of everyday life, making it automatically appealing to students.” ⁴⁰

First, we will participate in the divide-a-dollar activity. Students will split into groups of three. Each group will start out with an equal number of pennies (let’s say ten). I will give them the instruction that they need to split the pennies amongst themselves and that they must decide by majority rule. After a few rounds, we will talk about how the game could go on forever without any sort of intervention or parameter.

To illustrate the strength of coalitions, I will then say that any student who can earn six pennies according to the rules of the game can exchange them for a bag of chips. Assuming that it won’t take very long for each group to work out a solution, we will then have a discussion around the following questions:

1. How did your group make decisions about the pennies before the rules changed?
2. What happened once Ms. Grisham introduced the chip option?
3. How is your group planning on sharing the chips, if at all?

The discussion following that activity sets students up to think about coalitions. By giving students opportunities to create alliances, they will have a shared experience of working together towards a common goal.

Next, we will do the flag challenge, which comes from a challenge used on season 6 of the CBS show, Survivor.  We will start by watching the challenge from the actual episode. The challenge pits two players against one another. They are presented with 21 flags. On their turns, they can choose to take one, two, or three flags from the field of play. The players alternate back and forth until there are no more flags. The player who removes the last flag wins. The solution is for the player who goes first to take one flag on the first turn and then leave a multiple of four (16, 12, 8, 4) on each remaining turn.

After we watch the episode, I will have two students play (using 21 pennies) as a demonstration for the class. Students will continue to play in pairs until the class begins to notice winning strategies. Perhaps with a little help from me, we will verbalize the winning strategy.

There are three takeaways from this game:

1. The importance of working backwards from the solution to find the best strategy.
2. The importance of ignoring strategies that might distract from the final solution
3. Sometimes the best way to learn how to do something is by doing it multiple times (rather than someone telling you the strategy).

Throughout the rest of the unit, I will prompt students to make connections between these games and the examples they are learning from.

Activity #2: Distributive Politics

Before moving into activism, we will learn about the six building blocks of distributive politics, as discussed in the seminar. In middle school, students can understand these concepts through the example of a student council trying to change the school uniform policy.

Build coalitions: A student council too small might not capture the scope of opinions about uniform policy. A student council too large might not be able to overcome differences about what free dress should entail and fail to pass a new school policy that most students would support.

Advance moral commitments: A student council member who does not mind the uniforms will need a reason to care about changing the rule. Because the student council is founded on the premise of representing the student body, not their own personal interests, the student council member has a moral obligation to advocate for a free dress policy.

Pursue proximate goals: Perhaps the school principal adamantly opposes free dress. Instead of pitching a losing argument, the student council could advocate for “t-shirt and jeans Fridays.”

Entrench proximate gains: “T-shirt and jeans Fridays” is not free dress. Building on the momentum from that, students might advocate for “Free Dress Fridays.” However, what happens when all of the eighth graders on the student council graduate? How will they ensure that the principal doesn’t re-adopt uniforms once they all graduate? One answer would be to create a student council agenda to be used every year by the student council. One yearly point on the agenda would be student dress code.

Deploy resources: While a student council may not have a huge budget, they can use both their small budget and their social capital to create a school-wide campaign to build interest.

Find effective leaders: For our student council, they need a leader, most likely an eighth grader who can be the face of the free dress movement. They need someone to recruit teachers and parents who will advocate for them. They need someone who can keep the group motivated, even when it seems like the school administration will not budge.

Activity #3: Slogan Analysis⁴¹

Students will be grouped into 6 groups, each containing 3-4 students. Each group will receive a slogan on a piece of paper. The six slogans are: democracy not corporatization, end the oligarchy, human need not corporate greed, save the American Dream, we are the 99%, and jobs, justice, and education. Each group will take five minutes to learn more about their slogan using the Internet. At the end of their research time, each group should have rewritten the slogan in their own words.

Then, the class will have a discussion around these questions:

1. Based on what you may have heard and on these slogans, what do you think the activists are protesting?
2. What do you think they care about and want?
3. What other movements and protests does this one remind you of, and why?

Once we have answered these questions, students will read through New York Times articles from the protests. At the end, we will have a discussion using these questions:

1. Do you think that there is a central message of protestors at Occupy Wall Street? If so, what would you say it is?
2. From what you have read, what would you classify as the most important events of the protests thus far? Why do you think these events were the most important?
3. How would you characterize the police response to the protests?
4. What more do you want to know about these protests?
5. Would you consider joining these protests? Why or why not?