Gum Wars, revisited

I fully intend to be "short-winded" today, but we'll see how that goes once I get rolling.

By the way, Happy St. Patrick's Day, and here's an Irish blessing I heard on the radio today. "May your days be happy and your life be long, for there are few angels on earth, and Heaven is overflowing."

I felt I should give a follow up to my little lesson in history and sociology of the past few weeks. I will also let you in on a little secret regarding the level of intent. I had been contemplating a way to make a lesson out of some of the social issues that lead Germany into Nazi socialism in the last century. I really love the book "The Wave", about the history teacher in America whose exercise in "socialism", ( that is, the power of community, even moving to negative outcomes), went terribly well. And nearly had terrible consequences. My copy is at school, so I will try to remember reference info for another time.

Spring is the time that I typically try to bring some WWII history into my lessons, since several significant anniversaries take place in the next 60 days. When the gum issue arose, I had an opportunity to try something. It is a tactic that parents, teachers and other civic leaders have used, in various degrees of harshness, and with great success, for centuries.

The Gestapo style tactics of community pressure, negative "propaganda", secrecy, intimidation and public embarrassment, etc., were never intended to be nice. They were not concerned about popularity. What worked, worked.

My guilty gum-chewer could not survive the pressure. It was not completely intended to involve others, ( I was hoping the guilty party would just turn himself in), but it did ultimately take some peer pressure.

I was handed a wad of notes by one student, and a sheepish friend, with the comment from the second, "It's all true, it was me."

They had gone back and forth with things like "I'm going going to tell if you don't fess up", "Dude, don't tell, I'll bring you money next week", "I'ts not fair that we all get punished because of your stupidity.", "Man, don't tell, I'll make it up to the class somehow", and so on. 2 Pages, ending in some name calling.

It wasn't pretty, but it was effective.