It is said that absolute power corrupts absolutely.  Given a chance, members of my eighth grade English classes were able to bring this maxim to life during a simulation activity designed to help them understand the dynamics of power in George Orwell's Animal Farm.  Broken into groups of about five or six, students were asked to imagine that they had organized a rebellion and gained control of the school.  Their task was to come up with a constitution outlining the roles and responsibilities of their new "society," as well as a set of seven commandments to act as their guiding principles.  Once the groups got to work, I tapped a member of each group and asked them to leave the room with me.  These students were given a slip of paper with a unique challenge: dominate the process so that the constitution and commandments worked completely in their favor with the promise that they would receive unquestioning support from one other group member.  Once they returned to their group, I selected a new student from each group who were secretly instructed to support their leader and persuade others to follow.

The classroom, by design, descended into discordant chaos.  In one class, the unrest was so great, that one group formed a schism and decided to create a constitution all their own.  The experience made real for the students the dangers of rebelling without a clear plan for re-organization and the way in which power and opportunity can easily corrupt.  Here are some of the students' reflections on the process to witness the simulation in their own words.

"When we tried to organize our rebellion, it was a big struggle.  Everyone was shouting their ideas, trying to get their ideas across, leading and fighting for positions.  When we were discussing (i.e. shouting) I felt quite restricted--as I didn't really say much and didn't have much ideas, I though it was actually quite amusing how disastrous it went.  In our group, we had a dramatised fall-out, splitting our group into two camps.  In our 'camp,' Tyler otherwise referred to as 'Mr. T.' or 'The Ty,' was our leader--loud, strong and strict!  He managed to come up with good ideas and made a fairly good leader.  In the group, I think I was representing the hens in Animal Farm as I seemed to just laugh along and be okay with it.  I didn't have any 'assigned' goals, so I felt okay with everything.  I think most of the time I was easily persuaded." --Anita

"The Ty was the supreme leader of the group.  Ainslie was my henchman.  It was fun till everyone left my group because I was making everyone do things they didn't want to do.  Almost everyone left except for Ainslie.  Then Oscar came back to be head of security.  It was really fun.  I chose all of the rules and nobody had a say in any of it.  I did good except I was too harsh so everyone left.  The most persuasive behavior that I used was giving people what they wanted.  I think that I was Napoleon."  --Tyler

"Our group started out okay, but when Ty and I started pushing the others to make him leader, things backfired.  I think it went like this because we forced Ty as leader and undermined the others a little too quickly.  I was supposed to back up Ty but he started forcing himself on the others as 'The Ty.'  Since things were not going to the others' liking, people left.  I was most like Squealer."  --Ainslie

"What happened in this organization was that Peter was really the lead role in our organization.  He was listening to most of what Emily said and there was quite a few good ideas said.  I felt quite comfortable in my role because I wasn't the leader so all the pressure wasn't on me.  I think Peter was the leader of our group.  I think our group were successful in achieving our assigned goal, as our 7 commandments were pretty good.  The behaviour that was most persuasive was Peter's way of quickly saying the idea in a very persuasive and quick way."  --Todd

"We tried to create seven commandments about what students have to follow.  Ty decided he wanted to be a leader.  Most people were not happy about this.  Three of us decided to split up and create our own group.  We made our own commandments.  The three of us were very happy as we got the jobs we wanted.  In the other group, we had no say whatsoever.  We were very comfortable with our roles finally.  We successfully created seven commandments that we all agreed to and achieved our assigned goal.  I think I was most like Snowball in Animal Farm.  I decided to run away and take over another school, and launch attacks on ACS Hillingdon."  --Amar