My 9th grade Integrated Social Science class is in the middle of a unit focused on the theme “Social Order, Governance, and Power Structure.” The content pulls from ancient Greece, Rome, and China with some contemporary connections. However, one of the major concepts across the unit is legitimacy and how it functions within states.
We have been working through examples of Max Weber’s three types of legitimacy:
- Traditional – Authority based on long-standing customs, beliefs, and established ways of doing things.
- Charismatic – Authority derived from the personal charm, heroism, or leadership qualities of an individual.
- Rational-Legal – Authority based on a system of rules, laws, and procedures that are seen as fair and binding.
Ancient Greece and the Roman Republic are filled with great examples of each. One of the difficult parts of teaching the concept is to help students see that the legitimacy in most state’s draws from all three models. Likewise, legitimacy is built differently for each social group or stratification depending on their values, interests, etc. There are a number of rabbit-holes a lesson could go down.
This is a perfect example of a concept that can be taught best through putting students into a situation where they have to make choices and deal with consequences. I created another simulation hoping for the bump in engagement that experiential learning often brings. The conceptual framework also aligned perfectly with the narrative of Rome’s transition from Republic to Empire, so I chose that as my content. A little bit of dramatic flair and story telling can go a long way.
Through the simulation, students are confronted with 10 crises. At each one, they need to weight the cost and benefits to their personal legitimacy and commit to a choice. Each crises comes with preset outcomes depending on what students choose. Some of the outcomes ask students to roll a die for their decision’s impact in order to recognize both the roll of chance and others’ agency in determining events.
Students play through the simulation with two legitimacy trackers, one for the commoners and one for the elites. Decisions and outcomes often force them to make a choice between the two as the group interests are not always aligned.
After each decision, students roll for a random event. This is meant to both add a little fun and give another example of the role of chance and unintended consequences. They have the power to make choices, but the ultimate outcome of events is dependent on the aggregate impact of others’ choices in addition to their own. That’s agency; and it’s not divided equally.
I was quite pleased to see how engaged the students were with both their decisions and their outcomes. There was a lot of excitement when rolls went their way, and several groans when they did not. Two of my pairs did not survive the simulation. The numerical outcomes can always be adjusted to make survival a little harder.
Every simulation needs a debrief to make connections between what happened and the key concepts that served as the backbone of the simulation. The debrief questions I used are below. I required students to integrate unit vocabulary into their responses. Students showed some strong insight and I am looking forward to following up the simulation with a Harkness discussion to unpack everything we have been doing the last two weeks.
