Revolutions on Trial

Well hello there and we are back to the blogs. This one just happens to be the last one before winter break. This project was all about revolutions and preparing for the Winter Exhibition. Essentially we had to learn and know our assigned revolutions then create a mock trial about whether or not the revolution was effective or ineffective, presented by 2 groups, the prosecution and defence. 

This project’s driving question was “How can we, as legal teams, determine the effectiveness of a revolution?” and to answer that we did a series of assignments to help answer it, and better understand the concept of revolutions.The first thing we did was Nation X. Nation X was kinda like a role play thing to reinact the causing factors of a revolution and how one goes into effect here’s my reflection on it. It’s very intense and fills you in more. You’ve been warned. 

Our first actual assignment was to read and understand Crane Brintons anatomy of a revolution. Once we fully understood his theory we created a creative diagram to show our understanding. I decided to draw mine out because it made more sense to me that way. It’s actually kinda freaky how incredibly accurate his theory is and how well it fits into revolutions. After that we got assigned a book to read called animal farm which heavily connected to revolutions. I dont read a lot of novels but this book was surprisingly good. It fit perfectly to what Crane Brinton was saying and it was pretty cool. Later on we found out that animal farm was actually the Russian Revolution told differently. After every chapter or two we would come together as a class and discuss. This book helped tremendously with my understanding of a revolution. Later on we would go on to wright about how exactly animal farm connected to Crane Brintons theory. Here’s that here.

After that the work actually started. We got put into groups with different revolutions. I got put into the French Revolution with 4 other classmates. Our goal was to prove that the French Revolution was effect then in the other class they had the same group but they where trying to prove that the revolution was ineffective. Once we researched our revolution enough to the point where we knew it like our hand we collaborated with the other room to created an affidavit for the mock trail for the winter exhibition. There the audience would vote if the revolution was effective or ineffective after we presented our court trial. 

Once the affidavit was finished we did a few run throughs to see how it looked. We got some feedback and changed up our scripts. The winter exhibition required us to be at school all day. I had to go extra early because I had basketball at 7:30 and I didnt leave school until 8:30 PM! I was not looking forward to the performance but it was actually really fun and I learned a lot from this whole project. My role in the presentation was a Defence Lawer and I did the closing statement. Unfortunately our revolution was proven ineffective which means we lost but regardless I learned a lot and enjoyed it. 

I went into this project with a closed mind and was expecting the worse but leaving this project Ive learned so much about how revolutions work and the French Revolution and really enjoyed learning about revolutions and im looking forward to the next one. Until next time. 👋 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *