Whether or Not to Come to the Aid of One's Countryman: A Pre-Reading Group Activity for Use with The Crucible or To Kill a Mockingbird

Target Curriculum: English/Writing

Target Grade: 9 - 10

SOLs: E/W.10.1   E/W.10.2   E/W.10.3   E/W.9.2   E/W.9.4  
Time: 60 - 90 minutes

Objective:
Students will examine a scenario and make decisions about how people would be likely to act in that situation, how people should act in that situation, and how difficult it would be to take certain actions in that situation.

Purpose:
To identify common human reactions to pressure from peers in order to be able to apply the same concepts to the characters in either The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, or To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee.

Materials:
Handout with scenario and instructions--one copy per student (provided in procedure below) Chalk & chalkboard or overhead projector and pens

Procedure:
1. Students work in groups of 3 or 4 to complete the following handout:

On Whether or Not to Come to the Aid of One's Countryman:
Pre-Reading Group Activity for To Kill a Mockingbird or The Crucible

Directions: The following scenario describes a problem. Following the scenario is a list of possible solutions to that problem. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to read the scenario and the solutions, then rank the solutions according to the scales provided.

THE SCENARIO:

You are a student at Valley Ville High School. All is calm at Valley Ville, until one horrible day when a whole row of lockers is vandalized. Locks are cut open, books and personal items are stolen, destroyed, or scattered up and down the halls, the locker doors are badly bent so that they cannot be re-closed, and, to top the whole mess off, red and black spray paint has been used in a massive display of graffiti which extends from one end of the wall to the other. It is generally, but quietly, believed that the captain of the football team, Rod Bigman, and his football buddies were responsible; however, Rod and his buddies are Important Persons On Campus, and no one wants to get on their wrong side. Rod is popular and could ruin anyone's social standing in five minutes if he chose to do so. Circumstantial evidence, furthermore, seems to show that a very unpopular boy, Irwin P. Schneddlehopfer, was responsible. (Spray paint cans and several of the stolen items were found in his locker, which was suspiciously the only locker in that row which was untouched.) Irwin is not popular; he's the president of the Chess Club and treasurer of the Calculator Fanatics Club, he's skinny, wears big black-rimmed glasses which keep sliding down his nose, and pants hiked up to the waist (leaving his argyle socks and scruffy oxford shoes in plain view of the world) and cinched there with a belt to keep from falling down. Irwin, in short, is a nerd. A nice boy, but a nerd.

Since the damage to the lockers was assessed at something over $2,000, the administrators and the police are naturally anxious to apprehend the criminal, and Irwin is arrested almost immediately. Over the next two days, things really heat up. Since this is the first major crime in Valley Ville history, the papers really get a hold of it. Irwin, who had previously been up for full-ride scholarships to Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Berkeley, is suddenly suspended from school pending his trial. His family is told he will not graduate unless he confesses, and that, if he does confess, he will have to work all summer to pay for the damage, he will forfeit his letters of recommendation from Valley Ville faculty, and he will have to write an extra term project on the effect of crime on the small town community. If he completes all those, he will graduate with a D- average.

One girl, Sally Cawshus, does think about going to the principal to tell him that the real culprit was Rod Bigman, but word of her intention gets out. That afternoon, 14 guys from the football team follow her and her little brother home, chase them into an alley, tear up their books, and threaten them with physical abuse if any "false charges" are made against Rod. Sally abandons her plan.

While Sally had been thinking of going to the principal with rumors she had heard, YOU actually know the truth. You were just passing by the school on your job delivering pizzas that fatal Friday night, and you saw Rod and his buddies getting out of their pick-up trucks with spray paint, bolt cutters, and sledge hammers.

What do you do?

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS:

1. Keep quiet. You're up for election as student body president, your only chance to go to college is the baseball scholarship you're hoping to win as a result of your performance in the upcoming season, and Rod is a lot bigger than you are.

2. Call in an anonymous tip to the police, and hope they follow it up.

3. Have your parents set up a secret meeting with the authorities at a neutral spot which won't be associated with you in any way, and once you're secretly and safely at the meeting, agree to signing a secret affidavit, but refuse to testify in public at Irwin's trial.

4. Publicly defend Irwin.

YOUR GROUP'S TASK

Rankings: For each of the following questions, write the number of all four possible solutions ranked in order from most to least. Then write a sentence for each solution explaining why you placed it where you did.

NOTE: YOUR GROUP MUST AGREE ON PLACEMENTS!

1. Which of the solutions is the most sensible?
2. Which of the solutions is the easiest?
3. Which of the solutions is the most ethical, or morally right?
4. Which of the solutions do you think the average "Joe America" teenager is most likely to try?
5. Which of the solutions requires the most courage?

(This portion of the activity will require between 30 and 45 minutes, depending upon the dif

Observations:
While the students are working in groups, the teacher will observer how well the groups are working together, how effectively individual students are using rational arguments to support their positions, and to what extent the groups are able to come to consensus. He or she can make notes about which groups make particularly good points so that they can be called upon to provide their arguments during the whole-class discussion which follows.

Conclusions:
Students should identify such concepts as the following:

 people are not always likely to do what is right--especially in the face of peer pressure
sometimes people have to be willing to make a personal sacrifice in order to do what is right
what is popular is not always what is right

The teacher can prompt students to notice patterns they might otherwise miss and which are relevant to the literary work which will shortly be undertaken.

For Your Information:
I have found this activity to be particularly effective when working with these two works because the motivations of the main characters in those works tend to be alien to teenagers. By having to examine the motivations and complexities of decision-making in a situation which is more familiar and relevant to a teenager's experience, the students are able to take that understanding and apply it to the less familiar situations of Miller's play and Lee's novel. Where I used to have students say that they thought John Proctor or Atticus Finch behaved "stupidly," following this scenario I find that students are much more empathetic and admiring.

If using this scenario with The Crucible, Irwin can easily be compared to John Proctor, while Rod can be compared to Abigail Williams. If using this scenario with To Kill a Mockingbird, Irwin can be compared to Atticus Finch while Rod can be compared to Bob Ewell.

Extension:
Students must be asked to apply the concepts learned from this lesson to the literature under study.

Students can be asked to choose one of the statements developed by the class and either refute or defend it using real life examples.

Students can be asked to find newspaper articles of current events and analyze them to see if the people in the incident behaved as the students might expect them to behave according to their findings in this lesson.
(This makes a good interdisciplinary lesson with a history class.)

Students can be asked to write a letter to Irwin adopting the persona of the withess, explaining their decision about what to do, and justifying that decision. (There are many variations of this activity wherein the students might adopt the personas of other characters in the scenario--Rod, Sally, Irwin himself. This activity would address SOL's on point of view--9.3.3 as well as SOL's on writing--9.6, 10.7, 10.9)

Students can be asked to make a more formal oral presentation than that which is described here. Each group could, for instance, be assigned one of the topics (Sensible, Ethical, Likely) to present to the class, including the rationale for the ranking of the solutions. If the formal presentation is used, the activity would also address SOL's on presentation such as 9.2 and 10.2.

Class Discussion Questions:
Included in procedure above.

Cautions and Concerns:
This activity is effective in delivering SOL content only in conjunction with study of literature. If used in isolation, it might address some of the presentation SOL's, but is much more versatile as a preliminary activity to reading one of the major works mentioned.