The country Pleasure Town, otherwise known as the 12th grade International Relations class from Shanghai American School in Shanghai, China, seemed to begin the Civic Mirror with flying colors, at least according to their country forum page. The lively discussion began with a question posed by their Instructor Samuel Vierra:
“What did you learn about your classmates(and meetings in general) as you worked through the student-run lesson?”
As the students began their discussion it became obvious fairly quickly that the CM experience was already a positive one. Patrick began by commenting on the class as a whole and their progress,
Dramatization of Pleasure Town Discussion
“To be completely honest, everything ran quite smoothly during the student run lesson. If there was a disagreement, a simple anonymous vote was taken. This seemed to please everyone and therefore creating our national identity was relatively problem free. In terms of classmates, everyone was completely reasonable and it seemed that everyone seemed comfortable to put their own opinions out. Overall the experience was extremely assuring that the future of this country will be very smooth.”
Jocelyn, who also found the experience to be positive, also commented on how their country felt as though it belonged to the citizens,
“I think that being able to construct our own country and choose its specific characteristics personalizes this for us and motivates us to be active citizens in the upcoming simulation. The personalized feelings make us think: this is our country and we should take care of it. This also gave our class a national identity that gives us something in common and bonds us as the citizens of Pleasure Town. As everyone above said, things went smoothly. The name of the country was the hardest to decide on. The decisions were made either by everyone’s agreement or by voting anonymously. Overall, our class seems to be cooperative.”
Citizen Chua thought the experience was still positive overall but this citizen could still think of some realistic issues that could trip the country up,
“Like many above had said, everything ran “smoothly.” This is because many of us know each other, and we are generally fair and giving people. It was also easy to come to agreements because we were all in the same room, so talking things over would be easier. However, I can see a potential problem when we do Civic Mirror outside of class, as there will be less physical interaction and perhaps miscommunication will occur one time or another. The consensus is, though, that all of us are ethical people, so I am convinced that, even though there may be miscommunication, there will be not cheating of any sort.”
While Paige enjoyed that the votes were anonymous,
“The National Identity event instilled a lot of confidence in me about our class for this simulation. We all worked together very smoothly and there were no real conflicts. Like Patrick said, whenever there wasn’t agreement, we would just hold an anonymous vote. The element of anonymity really helped in our decision making process. At first, we tried to come up with country names by calling out ideas as a big group. When that didn’t go very well, however, we all wrote ideas anonymously on scraps of paper and came up with a lot more ideas. I think if we stick to those methods and others that worked last class, we’ll be very constructive as a group.”
It ha
s been said “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.” While most of the citizens gave favorable reports about their time with Patrick as their leader, Justyn was willing to give a different account of how he felt the events unfolded that day,
“The student ran session went pretty well. The only thing that I would have to point out that was negative out of the whole lesson would be the ganging up on the only junior in the class. Robbie was gone so I was the only one who was a junior and when it came to assignments they straight out bluntly picked on me. the whole class admitted to it and i guess with them being older it is only normal to do such a thing. They must look down on me because I am a junior and have their thoughts of superiority.
After Patrick mentioned he liked pancakes, everything about the country after that had to be a pancake joke or some sort of relation. cause of this event i feel like patrick is naturally going to be one of those people who when they open their mouths people are just going to listen to. as opposed to ppl like me who are looked down upon, are tried to be silenced.
i only bring this up because there were so many replies of positivity and great stuff about the student ran session so i’m here to provide the constructive criticism – because there’s always room for improvement.”
It seems as though for the most part Pleasure Town had a surprisingly great day. Although there was a substitute, the citizens were able to stay on track and have a fairly good experience. It is important to note the dissenting opinion, however. How will Pleasant Town respond to ideas and opinions that are different in the future? Any action or inaction by the Pleasure Townsians has the possibility to change the course of history….
