UC, week two

I can now safely say that UC is by far my favorite class this semester. It seems that everything we bring up in class is relative and applicable to the world around me. Although we are dealing a fair amount with IR theory, it is useful information. I take that to heart as I sit in other classes which seem to force-feed me trivial facts I will probably never need to recall. Both Tuesday and Friday classes were great experiences for me. I am particulary suprised at the fact that we (the class) can take a simple topic such as chairs or a fourth-grade classroom and expand it to World Politics. Obviously something as complex as international relations cannot be wholly explained by these in-class simulations but they do a pretty good job.

I would just like to add a few thoughts to Friday's class. It was no surprising that everyone had a lot to say, so I figured I'd just save some for the blog. First of all, it is true that a class of nine-year-olds are like nations in the sense that they care about their power and image in the world (or the classroom). It also perplexes me why kids fight over who gets to be the line leader. As you all probably remember, cutting the line is a serious offense. There was talk in class about how children have an embedded sense of justice. If you view cutting the line as someone cheating the system, it is no wonder kids become irritated. Likewise, countries want to be at the head and don't want anyone to get in their way. Now it's true that some kids will form friendships and work together towards a common goal such as reading a book. Fourth graders also help illustrate trade tendencies. How many times have you negotiated a juice-box or cookie swap at the lunchtable? Everyone in the classroom will work together to get what they want by trading away what they don't need or have an excess of. Of course there is always the kid who just wants to eat alone and the girl who goes around giving out cookies she baked the night before. I think in many ways the lunchtime metaphor can add a new dimension to Ian's classroom view.

It will be interesting where these conversations end up in the next few weeks. I look forward to focusing our classroom efforts on the various -isms of IR theory. I would also like to echo Rachel's post and say that I would like to spend some more time discussing the texts that we read. I think class simulations are great but let's not get so engrossed in hypotheticals that we don't have time to analyze "real" documents. Anyways, I am readily awaiting another great week.