I am charged with teaching the ancient Indian Manusmriti, the Laws of Manu handed down sometime around 200 bce. These laws helped solidify patriarchy and the caste system of Hindu society. I can always provoke a bit of outrage in my students as they read the laws from primary source, but it's, well.... let's say it can be dry.
To spice up this lesson, I wanted my students to engage more actively with the laws. It is easy for them to express enlightened disgust at the servile status of women that these laws imposed. I wanted them to try to see what the writer of these laws was attempting to accomplish as he set these laws in place. I wanted them to be able to criticize and defend. To contextualize. To understand the concept of dharma and its place in samsara.
I think the activity moved the depth of thinking from DOK-1 to DOK-2 and -3 as it forced kids to take a different perspective. "How could you?" "And what is the reason?" are practically embedded into the lesson. It forces students to do a bit of research and to contextualize the lesson. They also had fun doing it- and engaging kids is always half the battle. Several kids asked, "Can we do this again?" A victory! This is dry stuff for many 15 year olds.
After reading the laws and having a preliminary discussion about them, I asked the students to use this SMS composer tool to create a text exchange between themselves and Manu- the ruler to whom these laws are, by custom, attributed. They composed text exchanges and then shared these exchanges on this Padlet wall.
Students worked in pairs on this activity.
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