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The Crucible: Explored, Flipped, Applied

10/31/2012

2 Comments

 
So I made a weird decision.  I decided to teach the Crucible without having students read the actual text.  Because the importance of that text is less the text and more the themes and patterns.

The core of this idea is from Andrew, Karl and me.  But we need help making it more awesome.  Please comment with any ideas or tweaks you may have.

Here's the outline of the project:

1. Watch the Crucible (streaming on Netflix!).  Generally discuss the play/plot.

2. Ask students to consider and have a Socratic Seminar on two questions:
  • What motivation could you have for framing your best friend for a serious crime they didn't commit?
  • How would you go about convincing people that your friend, a person well known for being upright and honest, had committed this crime?
Their answers were awesome, by the way.

3. Consider and Seminar about the three basic views of human nature/goodness:
  • We are born basically good but can be corrupted
  • We are born basically evil, but can be good
  • We are a tabula rasa, and our influences are what determine our goodness
Discuss students' own view of human nature as well as the view of human nature as presented in The Crucible.  Give examples to support claims.

4. Watch documentary about Salem Witch Trials and the history/cultural influences going on in Salem.  Discuss/Seminar these questions:
  • How does that view of human nature influence the judgements we make about the characters and situations?
  • How does that affect how we perceive the entire event?  Is it an aberration or an inevitability?  Is it because of the cultural crucible presented in the documentary?


Here's the final product:
A video, essay or multi-media project that does this:
Using your assumptions about human nature and the impact that has on your view of the Salem Witch Trials, consider how the conditions could be created for this to happen again.  


Construct that scenario.  And since accusing people of witchcraft is currently out of fashion, what crime is likely to replace it (but keeps the same connotation and impact witchcraft had in Salem)?


Class context:
This is a class of mixed 11th and 12th graders, who are fairly proficient at technology and research, and can work together and collaborate extremely effectively.  They have learned how to do close reading, how to collaborate on Google Drive, how to create and upload videos to YouTube, etc.

We have access to a computer lab with brand new MacBook Pros, with both OS X (Mountain Lion) and Windows 7 on them.  I can stretch this project into next week, but I'd like it to be done by Friday, 7 November.

If you have suggestions or ideas about this, please post them here as a comment!
2 Comments
David Theriault link
11/1/2012 01:50:32 pm

1. Let the students at least see some of the language of the play. Pick a few scenes or sections of scenes that touch on your steps 2 and 3.
2. Perhaps read the intro by Arthur Miller. His explanation of the reality of Satan is pretty cool. In fact I'd say that people still get called "witches" today their accusers just use other code words.
3. The scenes that resonate with me are the ones where Rev. Hale talks about the value of life vs. being right and Proctor's idea of reputation and name. Heck we bring up this idea of reputation and name when Iago discusses it in Othello. Perhaps a few choice quotes from the play to use as intros to scenes in their movies.

Good luck. The idea of not reading the play makes me a tiny sad, but I like your risk taking and exploratory approach to teaching.

Reply
Cheryl Morris (admin)
11/1/2012 02:11:27 pm

Thanks for your comment!

The reason we're not reading it is more about time constraint than anything else. I only have 9 weeks left, and with two huge novels (Huck Finn and Indian Country), there just wasn't another week to give to The Crucible.

As another teacher said on Twitter today, this was meant to be seen, rather than read, so I'm not too sad about missing the play itself. And over half of my students have asked to read it on their own, so many will get the benefit of the text as well.

My real thinking is this: the plot isn't important, at least not compared to understanding the issues that drive the play and the characters. I actually think Arthur Miller would like this approach - he wrote the play as a statement against similar cultural forces as afflicted the Puritans in Salem, and by finding the ways in which we do the same in our culture, we're extending the meaning of the play outside of its original mandate. The history, the human nature questions, and the ability to apply it to a culture who believed they have "evolved beyond" that kind of thing...that's the real skill. Seeing through our "chronological snobbery" to find the ways in which we're all still the same as the Puritans who hanged witches or the senators who cried "Communist" in the HUAC hearings.

As Andrew would be saying at this point...I'll get off my soapbox. :-)

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    I'm a math teacher masquerading as an English teacher. I write about my classroom, technology, and life. I write in British English from the Charlotte, NC area.

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