Social Experiment

A few weeks ago, I was attending a cub scout meeting with my son. I saw that the pack leader had designed a fun activity for the kids to do. Cub scouts are elementary school kids, so the age range is 6-11. The pack leader had brought in some small brown paper bags and the kids were supposed to make puppets out of them using crayons. The scouts had a good time, and after a few minutes, my son ran up to me and showed me his completed puppet. But then, the leader surprised me by telling the scouts that now that their puppets were done, they were going to use them to create a public service announcement about the cub scouts. He explained what a public service announcement was, then separated them into groups of three, and said they had ten minutes to come up with the commercial. Then, they would take turns acting it out for the parents.

I have to admit, I was really skeptical. I had little faith that even after an explanation, such young children could really grasp what a public service announcement really was. I did not think these kids would be able to come up with anything, especially working completely independently, especially the younger ones, of which there are many in the pack. I observed the groups talking amongst themselves. To an adult, their giggles and awkward sentences barely seems like communication. I was very curious what these groups would present when time was up.

To my astonishment, each group of kids got up there, and in ten minutes, came up with mini commercials advertising the cub scouts. Some of them had their ads sponsored by taco bell. Many of them mentioned all the cool activities that could be done when you join boyscouts. Many ended their commercials with the call to "join today!" I was truly impressed that these young kids were able to create coherent commercials advertising the boy scouts all on their own in ten minutes.

A few weeks later, I was preparing a lesson on technological innovations of eighteenth century America for my eighth grade class. We read about advances in transportation and communication technologies, such as railroads, steamboats, and the telegraph. We also read about new tools in agriculture that allowed for farmers to claim formerly untenable land in the grasslands of central United States, tools such as the steel plow and the mechanical thresher. I then thought it would be neat to recreate the activity that the boy scouts had done, but instead relate it to the lesson we had just learned. I told the students to pick one of the innovations or inventions that they learned about in the lesson, then put them into groups of three, and asked them to create an advertisement for it. I gave them fifteen minutes.

Let me say that I have seen students in the past come up with some very creative things when given the opportunity. But, this particular class of eighth graders that I have is a very low level class. I put them in groups and asked them to tell me which innovation they chose (mostly to force them to pick one right away and thus avoid spending too much time trying to decide). Then, I walked around the room to observe the groups as they worked.

Mostly, I was very disappointed. Many of the students were not even discussing any type of plan as to what they would do when it was their turn. Many students simply created a dry list of facts pulled straight out of the book. When it was finally time for the groups to present, only four out of seven groups had put anything together at all, and most were dry, unexciting, and demonstrated a complete lack of creativity. This was completely disappointing to me, because I felt that the topic had so much potential for amazing skits to be created. If you chose railroads you could simulate customers riding in a train car, and talking about the scenery, or making fun of stagecoaches. If you chose steamboats, you could have addressed the live shows that were held on most of the liners for entertainment. They could have talked about the steel plow and how much easier it made work. The activity was such an abysmal failure, that it only served to sap my morale and enthusiasm as a teacher.

Why can a group of young elementary age boy scouts do such a good job of creating advertisements, while a group of 13-14 year old eighth graders completely fail at it? I really don't know how to answer  that question, but I'd like to think that it's just because my son and his pack are all geniuses!