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ChristianKl comments on Open thread, Oct. 27 - Nov. 2, 2014 - Less Wrong
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Today I had an aha moment when discussing coalition politics (I didn't call it that, but it was) with elementary schoolers, 3rd grade.
As a context: I offer an interdisciplinary course in school (voluntary, one hour per week). It gives a small group of pupils a glimpse of how things really work. Call it rationality training if you want.
Today the topic was pairs and triple. I used analogies from relationships: Couples, parents, friendships. What changes in a relationship when a new element appears. Why do relationships form in the first place? And this revealed differences in how friendships work among boys and among girls. And that in this class at this moment at least the girl friendships were largely coalition politics: "If you do this your are my best friend," or "No we can't be best friends if she it your best friend." For the boys it appears to be at least wquantitatively different. But maybe just the surface differs.
I the end I represented this as graphs (kind of) on the board. And the children were delighted to draw their own coalition diagrams, even abbreviating names by single letters. You wouldn't have bet that these diagrams were from 3rd grade.
How did you deal with the prospect of one of the kids being emotional hurt by the whole process of being explicit about relationships?
I of course have an eye on the emotional wellbeing of the children. But I'm not really clear what kind of emotional hurt you mean. Being exposed to e.g. be the loner possibly? I probably wouldn't try it in this relatively direct way if the group weren't that small (4 children) when I can keep the discourse inspirational and playful at all time.
Yes. Getting children to openly state: "We can't be best friend because you are best friends with X" seems to ask for trouble but if you have enough presence in the room to keep the discourse inspirational and playful it might be fine.
Ah yes. "We can't be best friend because you are best friends with X" wasn't literally said with respect to someone in the room. Something like that was quoted by a girl as an example thus it wasn't personal in that moment but I assume that it is a real statement too.