We are reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in the junior class. I’m trying to get them to understand the general cruelty of the nurses and the orderlies so I went searching on the internet for something that would be applicable. I discovered the Milgram Experiment (google it if you like, I’m not cool enough to imbed URLs from the web client) and thought A Ha! So I found many websites with interesting information and I tried to figure out how to present the data to the kids.

What I had them do was fill out a questionnaire on how much cruelty they believe they would be willing to mete out, then how much they believe other people would mete out. Does it matter if an authority tells you to? Why would someone do as they were told? And a few other questions I can’t remember.

Then I handed them the reports about the Milgram Experiment, but see…. I was sneaky. Before I printed the information I formatted it to have big gaps between paragraphs. Then when I printed it I cut them out into strips. Then I mixed the strips up. The kids have to put the paragraphs together in order so that they can read the reports. So not only are they getting nifty information but they have to do problem solving and work in a group for collaborative learning. Then once they have it all together they have to respond to the information and we are discussing it. Sweet.

The kids are doing fabulously well. Of course they are whining about working–but they are working. 🙂