During the ship activity we did in class, I was able to discover a lot about the nature of our class, and mainly teenagers as a whole. When you told us the boat was going to sink if seven people did not go "overboard," people immediately turned to the people with obvious downfalls, such as the Draft Evader for being a drug dealer. However, no one on board took the time to re-read or discuss the positives of keeping certain people aboard. This activity highlighted the nature of human behavior, we take the easy way out by judging everything at face value(the drug dealer and the eldery couple). Also, no one took the time to re-read the packet and learn about useful charactersitic some of the people on the life boat had. This highlights the laziness of teenagers and the hesitance to work hard in school. Although the situation was only a simulation of the real thing, if our class was really about to sink on a lifeboat, we would all use the same tactics, not necessarily the smartest ones, but the most convenient ones to send 7 people overboard. I was the Peace Corp Volunteer and was immediately thrown overboard after discovering I had no use on the boat. I thought that throwing me oveerboard, along with many other people such as the Noble Peace Prize Winners, was done because of stereotyping. The stereotype of a Peace Corps Volunteer is someone who just paints rainbows all day and wants everyone to smile, so how could they possibly be helpful on the lifeboat?
Overall, this simulation made me realize that as teenagers, we often do not make the smartest decisions, but rather take the easy route out.
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Your analysis of this activity is very interesting. I totally agree with you in that we made decisions due to face-value. But, we also made decisions about usefulness. Except, we didn't take time to read people's background info to see if they would be useful- we just looked at their profession and the outside appearance to judge their usefulness. However, i do think we should have thrown overboard the nobel prize in literature instead of you because you had a lot of knowledge to offer as well as your excellent health. But, i was the pregnant cheerleader and we decided i was safe no matter what so after that i didn't have much of a say.
ReplyDeleteHey, I re-read the packet, I wanted to find out who had epilepsy and no medication. Before I could find it everyone was shouting "KILL THE DRUG DEALER!" and I got thrown over. Maybe if I had lived people would have taken my example and looked over the packet, then again, taking advice from the draft dodging drug dealer might seem a little weird for most people.
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