Miranda Talavera Béjar, Grade 12
UWCRBC
As UWC students, we love to hypothetically do everything right. As Global Politics students, we like to believe we would be better than the current world leaders, we would never let these atrocities happen, but would we actually be any different? One very standard Tuesday, our GloPo teacher was determined to find the answer to this question. She split us into 5 pairs and assigned a type of government to act out to each of the pairs and gave us a budget. Our task
was to pretend we had our own country and make decisions according to our assigned type of government when confronted with different scenarios. Of course we would have to use the budget wisely and take care of our citizens, but she intentionally did not mention this, since it was implied with being our country’s leader.
In this simplified model of International Relations, our teacher gave us the opportunity to prove to ourselves that we would in fact “do it better than them”. Along with one of my classmates, I was asked to be a dictator, and fell into fascism. The main thing I accuse my president of. (Un)surprisingly, almost all of us were willing to sacrifice human rights to protect our made-up nations. Time and time again we opted for investing in the militia and weapons rather than education and healthcare.
Our teacher called us out at the end of the activity, after seeing how no one had realized what we had done. She begun by asking seemingly harmless questions exclusively to see our new-found understanding of some of the different types of government. She started increasing the insightfulness of the questions and we started to realize the ulterior motive of this game. I was very embarrassed to say the least. How could I be blinded by the absolute smallest representation of power to the extent that I would ignore even my own requests? If I lived in the country I had created as a regular citizen, I would have already been on the streets fighting to get the incompetent leader thrown out. I was fascinated by this activity simply because it made us fall. Now we needed to get back up.
The collective moment of realization we had as a class was truly eye-opening. We are indeed no better than the people who govern us. After all, they were normal people like us once, what was so different about us then? The early on-set quarter-life crisis really struck. What was I doing there if I couldn’t control myself even in a game?!
It is a well-known fact that nothing in this life is either black or white, there is always gray area. But we don’t truly understand the existence of the gray area until we become it. 10 teenagers from all over the world who dedicate their lives to fight for justice fell right into the trap and false promises of money and power, even in a fun and hypothetical game. Realizing the complexity of politics never looked so fun!
Image Courtesy: https://www.gob.mx/epn/articulos/objetivosdelapoliticaexteriordemexico
was to pretend we had our own country and make decisions according to our assigned type of government when confronted with different scenarios. Of course we would have to use the budget wisely and take care of our citizens, but she intentionally did not mention this, since it was implied with being our country’s leader.
In this simplified model of International Relations, our teacher gave us the opportunity to prove to ourselves that we would in fact “do it better than them”. Along with one of my classmates, I was asked to be a dictator, and fell into fascism. The main thing I accuse my president of. (Un)surprisingly, almost all of us were willing to sacrifice human rights to protect our made-up nations. Time and time again we opted for investing in the militia and weapons rather than education and healthcare.
Our teacher called us out at the end of the activity, after seeing how no one had realized what we had done. She begun by asking seemingly harmless questions exclusively to see our new-found understanding of some of the different types of government. She started increasing the insightfulness of the questions and we started to realize the ulterior motive of this game. I was very embarrassed to say the least. How could I be blinded by the absolute smallest representation of power to the extent that I would ignore even my own requests? If I lived in the country I had created as a regular citizen, I would have already been on the streets fighting to get the incompetent leader thrown out. I was fascinated by this activity simply because it made us fall. Now we needed to get back up.
The collective moment of realization we had as a class was truly eye-opening. We are indeed no better than the people who govern us. After all, they were normal people like us once, what was so different about us then? The early on-set quarter-life crisis really struck. What was I doing there if I couldn’t control myself even in a game?!
It is a well-known fact that nothing in this life is either black or white, there is always gray area. But we don’t truly understand the existence of the gray area until we become it. 10 teenagers from all over the world who dedicate their lives to fight for justice fell right into the trap and false promises of money and power, even in a fun and hypothetical game. Realizing the complexity of politics never looked so fun!
Image Courtesy: https://www.gob.mx/epn/articulos/objetivosdelapoliticaexteriordemexico
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