Democracy

[blondebaroness]

I'm preparing to teach 6th grade and am reading the "Reader" that will be used in my class. The story in question is "The Skill of Pericles" by David Scott Meier. It is a play about ancient Greek teens trying to discover what Pericles will give a prize for. It turns out that he's looking for the individual who is the best friend

Comments

[ghostwes]

To paraphrase Bovard: "Two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner."

[foolsguinea]

e_e Yeah, sure, like apex predators ever get a majority of warm bodies.

[the_rukh]

What is first prize anyways? Can I exchange it for a hat or some chewing gum?

[blondebaroness]

The prize awarded in this story is recognition of the one possessing the value that Pericles thinks most important in Greek culture. The story is kid-lit, not a true reflection of Greek City-State values. It's a cute story about friendship but brings up the concept of democracy. Is democracy about giving?

[the_rukh]

Not really. Democracy is more about diminishing the power of any one individual so they can't take as much as they otherwise could. A byproduct of that is (hopefully) that more people get what they want than otherwise.

It is unfortunately a human government system and has to deal with humans, which means that the only tools you have to work with are greed and envy, not much else.

What you're looking for is more like socialism. I'm a big fan of socialism.

[musicpsych]

This might be open to interpretation based on how it was translated, but it could be that "giving" in this sense is "participating," i.e., voting, participating in politics, giving time, giving thought, giving attention, etc. I don't think "giving" means something like "giving money to charity" (at least, I hope not).

To teach them, maybe you could have them vote on things in the classroom, maybe make a ballot so they vote on a few things, or even have them pick positions and campaign. Not fundamentally important things, but maybe more like, "which poster should we hang up," "should we line up in alpha order or reverse alpha order," etc.

[harry_beast]

Democracy is about giving. It's about contributing one's time, attention and effort to share in the common business of studying important issues, negotiating between competing interests to find compromise, making difficult decisions and reaching out to everyone to involve them in the process. It is about caring about one's country, its people and its values.

[404]

Democracy is simply the sharing of political power between (or diffusing it, it you will) the people and not concentrated within a small group of people (an oligarchy) or a king or a dictator. The Greek experiment of democracy would have involved everybody voting on every law, which is direct democracy, but in the USA we have a representative democracy, in which citizens elect officials to write and vote on laws.

[chron_job]

Both those quotes seem to be not explanations of Democracy, but descriptions of traits which some democratic societies have inculcated in order to further themselves.

I seems to me that an "Explanation" would be more of a "definition". One that would work with 11-12 years olds (Damn! none of the big words I so dearly love!)

"Democracy is when what I want is as important as what you want, and just as important as what that guy over there wants. So we all have to work together to figure out the best ways to decide what to do."