Lesson Idea: Counterculture Activity

In the last Lesson Idea post, we covered a "Conformity Activity"-basically an experiment to see how long your students could conform to your own rules before breaking them, all so they could better understand how groups like the Nazis or the American govt. could control their populaces in the early 20th century. Today, we'll be expanding on that with "Counterculture", or, "who can be the most different?"

In history, counterculture was often looked to as the thing people did to express themselves and/or to express an idea. In the 1960s and 1970s, this was the Hippie movement; the 1980s was Punk, 1990s was Grunge, and the 2000s and today are the Hipsters. In all cases, the members of these groups wanted to be different than the mainstream culture (the conformers), and showed this by the clothes they wore, the music they listened to, or any amount of things that would label them "different". For students today, it can be hard to fully understand why people gravitated towards counterculture, so it's in your best interests as a teacher to give them a chance to see it firsthand.

The goal of this activity is to teach students about how being different was appealing to people, and how they used this to their advantage to raise awareness on touchy subjects or make statements on worldwide events. It can also show that even by being different, people were still conforming to ideals, just ones they were interested in. I suggest performing this activity right after you do the conformity one, though both can be used separately for their own respective units. Therefore, the endgame of this activity is for one or more students to be the most different from their fellow students as possible. Here are some rules to follow (you don't necessarily have to-they are here for a guideline):

• All students start exactly the same, with the same interests, activities, etc. (useful with Conformity activity).
• One student is chosen as the "catalyst"; they can choose what they like and how they express themselves, albeit within the limits of school rules.
• Students who appeal to this new "movement" can join it if they like, but they'll only be able to stay with this group for the rest of the time.
• Students can come up with new ways to distinguish themselves from the rest of the groups and even within their own group; if needed, they can have the option of leaving their group to go solo.
• After three days or so, the student/s who is/are most different from their classmates wins.

Beyond this, this activity is free reign. Students can wear goofy sunglasses, backwards shirts, weird hairstyles, or anything else they appeal to. They must also choose a topic, however silly it may be, to represent and either support or protest it (ex.: Johnny protests the use of mechanical pencils to return us to a "simpler time" with No. 2s). At the end of the activity, the students should be able to understand the historical significance of counterculture, and how it affected people in a very strange way. While there is much we still don't know about the appeal of it, with this activity, the history of the Rebel Societies can be taught to your students in a fun and interactive way.

-Pharaoh Noh-Tyep