G8: Socratic Seminar Prep

Sample page from a case study on the mining of Coltan and Forced Labour in the DRC. Full document here.

To help students understand these complications, I created three different case studies on (1) The issue of Coltan & Forced Labour in the DRC, (2) The Devadasi system in India, (3) The Dangers of Dating Apps.

We divided the students into the three groups and they explored their topic in depth through the use of a guided worksheet. The activity culminated in a socratic seminar where they compared their case studies in order to determine what human rights were being violated and what factors were the leading cause to these violations. Was their issue an economic problem? A social problem? A political problem? Who are the main stakeholders and what would it take to convince one of them to change their behaviour?

Overall, I was really impressed with the engagement and the level of conversation. While many of the students really wanted to jump into solving the issue right away, they started to realize that sometimes solutions aren’t so simple and that to enact any sort of change, they really need to consider the root of the problem.

Definitely an activity that I look forward to doing again.

This year, my grade 8 partner and I re-vamped our human rights unit. Our school service coordinator planned a school-wide event on human trafficking and we chose to use this as the lens through which we explored the issue of human rights.

The topic of human rights in general is rich and fascinating with many debatable points and angles from which students can be challenged. We wanted to fuel that energy and passion into our discussions and to inspire students to learn more about global problems.

Our big debatable question was: Why is it hard to enforce universal human rights?

We really wanted students to understand that even though we have this universal declaration of human rights, and even though many countries agree that they should be implemented, they aren’t. There are many factors and situations where obstacles prevent their enforcement and to make a change, you need to identify and address those underlying issues or the problem will never go away.

First page to the socratic seminar guided worksheet. Full document here.