This time the initial Kahoot! game and lecture went twenty minutes, so the game definitely felt rushed. What was strange to me was that although what ended up getting cut was the debate, the students still felt rush during the preparation.
This time around, it was the feminists, Christians and bourgeois socialists that had the most outgoing students. William Lloyd Garrison in particular had a great time explaining how the League’s old motto, “All men are brothers”, was dividing the proletariat against itself by ignoring women workers, and that by adopting the motto “Humankind is one” they could begin to address this problem.
What was also interesting to me was that during the reflection, the issue of perspective, which had dominated the reflection portion of the other case, did not come up at all. Instead, the students fixated on how the factions had little incentive to vote other than for their own proposals. This was a particularly interesting reflection given that at the last minute, the bourgeois socialists and the Christians made an alliance to vote for each others’ proposals to eliminate section III.1.A, which attacks Christian socialists, and section III.2, which attacks bourgeois socialists. The other class failed to make such alliances.
I suspect that what made these alliances seem particularly weak was that the anarchists abstained on both of those proposals, which resulted in a tie. Because I ruled that proposals could only pass with a majority, these abstentions were critical.
Like last time, the debates focused on the first section. Interestingly, even though the classes had similar amounts of prep time, the Wednesday class was prepared with alternative names and slogans. The Thursday class was focused on the speeches and sort of winged the process of actually creating an alternative name or slogan.
The question of timing again suggests that the most logical thing to do is have the debates focus on either the name questions or the edit questions. On the one hand, the edit questions I suspect force the students to do more critical reading of the text in class. On the other hand, the naming questions are valuable because the politics of the different questions become hyper visible: this time, because the bourgeois socialists had a good debate among themselves during their discussion, they of course understood that the feminists proposed motto, “Humankind is one”, fit their politics. I don’t know why they still refused to vote for it.
Leaning into the dramatic nature of the game, I think what I need to do is have the first debate be weighted towards changing the name of the group. That is, have something like four out of the five factions be in favor of changing the name of the organization to the Communist League. The vote from such a debate would not only be historically accurate, as the League did vote to change their name to the Communist League and the motto, “Workers of the World Unite!”, it will also bring some momentum to the second debate. The second debate I’m okay being tilted towards a stand-off.
This time around, it was the feminists, Christians and bourgeois socialists that had the most outgoing students. William Lloyd Garrison in particular had a great time explaining how the League’s old motto, “All men are brothers”, was dividing the proletariat against itself by ignoring women workers, and that by adopting the motto “Humankind is one” they could begin to address this problem.
What was also interesting to me was that during the reflection, the issue of perspective, which had dominated the reflection portion of the other case, did not come up at all. Instead, the students fixated on how the factions had little incentive to vote other than for their own proposals. This was a particularly interesting reflection given that at the last minute, the bourgeois socialists and the Christians made an alliance to vote for each others’ proposals to eliminate section III.1.A, which attacks Christian socialists, and section III.2, which attacks bourgeois socialists. The other class failed to make such alliances.
I suspect that what made these alliances seem particularly weak was that the anarchists abstained on both of those proposals, which resulted in a tie. Because I ruled that proposals could only pass with a majority, these abstentions were critical.
Like last time, the debates focused on the first section. Interestingly, even though the classes had similar amounts of prep time, the Wednesday class was prepared with alternative names and slogans. The Thursday class was focused on the speeches and sort of winged the process of actually creating an alternative name or slogan.
The question of timing again suggests that the most logical thing to do is have the debates focus on either the name questions or the edit questions. On the one hand, the edit questions I suspect force the students to do more critical reading of the text in class. On the other hand, the naming questions are valuable because the politics of the different questions become hyper visible: this time, because the bourgeois socialists had a good debate among themselves during their discussion, they of course understood that the feminists proposed motto, “Humankind is one”, fit their politics. I don’t know why they still refused to vote for it.
Leaning into the dramatic nature of the game, I think what I need to do is have the first debate be weighted towards changing the name of the group. That is, have something like four out of the five factions be in favor of changing the name of the organization to the Communist League. The vote from such a debate would not only be historically accurate, as the League did vote to change their name to the Communist League and the motto, “Workers of the World Unite!”, it will also bring some momentum to the second debate. The second debate I’m okay being tilted towards a stand-off.