Backpack Analogies

So, I love analogies.... I really do. And I've found that oftentimes, they work really well with middle school students. In my eighth grade classes, we just finished our unit on the establishment of the colonies, life in colonial America, unrest on teh colonies and then, of course, the fantastic Revolutionary War. We ended the unit with the Battle of Yorktown and the signing of the Treaty of Paris.

This unit is the Constitution and the creation of our government today as we know it. So to build up to that, we were looking at John Locke and some of the politcal philosophers of the time. They had a little trouble understanding John Locke so I had to use some little analogies to help them understand.

For example: John Locke said that the point of governemtn was to not take away the natural rights of the people. Natural rights, such as life, liberty and property (or the pursuit of happiness as T-Jeff said... or the pursuit of happyness as Will Smith said). Additionally, kings should not be absolute rulers and take away the natural rights of the people. To help the students understand this, I explained that if I took Maria's backpack without asking and made it mine, I was abusing my absolute power as well as taking away her right to property. This they understood.

So we took it a little further. Locke also says that sometimes people have to give up their rights in exchange for protection and safety. So I asked what would happen if I took away Maria's backpack again. The kids said that I would be taking away her right to property. And I replied yes because I was using teh backpack to whack someone that was about to attack Maria. This laughed but understood that although Maria has to give up her right to property, she is exchanging it for being protected from the guy who is getting whacked by the backpack. Luckily, they got this too.

So, I really am enjoying how the analogies are working. i have a feeling that these ideas in the Constitution are going to be a little difficult for them to understand, especially my EL students, so I'm hoping that I can continue coming up with analogies and that my students continue to use the analogies to understand what concepts I'm trying to teach.

Oh, and they liked my nicknames for some of the framers of the Constitution: T-Jeff, B-Fran, Jadams, J-Mad and A-Ham. Good times.