Yesterday in sociology we did an activity called "Abandon Ship," and it was basically that 16 students got different characters that they had to be, and we were all stuck on a life-boat, but only 9 could stay on because it was too small. together, we had to choose who the 7 characters who would be thrown overboard were. The characters were a sailor, the ship's officer, a quarter master who had two broken hands, a self-made millionaire who was over weight, a college student with epilepsy, a nobel prize winner in literature, a nobel prize winner in physics, an ex-football player and his wife the pregnant cheerleader, an army captain with a prosthetic leg, a draft evader aka drug dealer, a peace corp volunteer, a med student, an elderly couple, and a traveling poet. After a little bit of all of us being on the "boat" we had to choose who was going to get thrown off. We figured that because they were getting life vests, the stronger people would survive on their own so we threw off the healthy, strong people, and kept the sick, old, or pregnant people along with the med student, the peace corp volunteer, and the physics prize winner. Today, after a discussion in class, we realized that we were actually the first class to operate that way. Sal said that most classes in the past, unlike us, threw off the unhealthy and the old people, figuring that they were going to die anyway. I found it interesting when looking at statistics from past classes that the Nobel Prize winner in physics, and the med student were never thrown off the boat. We were talking about why this might have happened, and came to a conclusion that sociologically, most people value usefulness and practicality, so therefore they kept the med student, who would be able to help others, and the physics winner, who could make a difference in the world and invent something important.
My class got rid of all the sick, nonuseful people. Its really cool that your class was the first to value the sick and elderly.
ReplyDeleteOne point of clarification here is that I am not so sure that anyone would choose the healthy and strong to survive. In this case, I think it is because my students are all Americans and they value these things in our culture, but someone from a different culture might have different values such as old age instead of youth, or they might value those that have lived with hardships instead of those with perfect health or strength. So this is an example of macro sociology: large groups being influenced similarly, in this case the group might be teens or Americans.
ReplyDeletePs.
ReplyDeleteYou should apply this to your own life or a unique example from your own experience.