Last night I went through no fewer than 15 lesson plans (and many more partial ones) in my head, wracking my brain for what to do with the 12th grade today on All My Sons. I had designed a lesson on looking at Chris's "survivor's guilt" at being the only man from his military company in WWII to have survived and returned to a newly prosperous community. The more I read the scene, the more I was struck by Chris's ambivalent attitude toward money, and how it seems to be evidence of a larger ambivalence in society generally, epitomised in post-war America, where money is both vilified and glorified.
So I decided to make the lesson about dirty money.
Here's how class went.
"Do you know what a haiku is?"
(some general ideas - it's a poem, it's short)
We established that it was Japanese poetry form consisting of three lines: the first and third lines have 5 syllables, the second line has 7 syllables.
Then I asked them all to write haikus. Subject: dirty money.
Here's the one I wrote:
Where did it come from?
Well, I don't want to tell you.
Where can I get some?
I didn't collect them, so I can't post theirs, but there was mention of "men inside suits", "the streets", "black market", "unearned capital", and "I'm-a get some, yo."
After delivering the haikus, I asked them what dirty money was, which led to a much more interesting conversation than I had anticipated. At first we were in rows and people were not listening well to each other, so I asked them to move into a circle. Immediately the quality of the discussion improved, and students in my smarter than smart 12-2 class pinpointed quickly the difficulty with defining what "clean" money is. Layali said that white-collar crime, like embezzling and money laundering, creates dirty money.
Others said anything illegal creates dirty money, but a handful contended that drug selling and prostitution don't necessarily earn "dirty money". If money is earned, it's clean, some said. Someone said "A teacher earns clean money." Phew! But then others pointed out that some teachers write essays for their students, and take money for that, and then grade them highly, which they said is unethical. The understanding of the class changed quite dramatically, and it became clear quickly that it's hard to define dirty money.
I asked them to look at the text to find a line that revealed the nature of Chris and Keller's relationship to money. Their choices revealed the ambivalence I'd noticed in my own reading.
Chris: "[when I came home from the war] I felt...what you said...ashamed somehow. Because nobody was changed at all. .... I felt wrong to be alive, to open the bank book, to drive a new car, to see the new refrigerator. I mean you can take those things out of a war, but when you drive that car you've got to know that it came out of the love a man can have for a man, you've got to be a little better because of that. Otherwise what you have is really loot, and there's blood on it. I didn't want to take any of it.
Compare that sentiment to this open embrace of surplus and prosperity, only a paragraph later:
Chris: "Oh Annie, Annie ... I'm going to make a fortune for you!"
For Chris, the returned soldier, money is the problem, but it's also the solution.
Analysing Keller, several students said that his repeated insistence that the money he earns from his successful business is clean reveals that he doesn't actually feel good about it - otherwise why would he force the issue so much? His poorly concealed hesitation is also contrasted with his overt embrace of material wealth.
Keller: "It's good money. There's nothing wrong with it."
"I'm going to build you a house, stone, with a driveway from the road. I want you to spread out, Chris, I want you to use what I made for you. I mean with joy Chris, without shame... with joy."
Then later, unabashed enthusiasm about his wealth:
"There's gonna be a wedding, kid, like there never was seen! Champagne, tuxedos...!"
I was so pleased that in each class students identified that Chris feels guilty just for being alive and having money, not for having done anything wrong in the war (while his father actually did make unethical business decisions during the war, which makes his money more technically "dirty").
I posed the question to the class in light of Chris's sentiments: "is it possible to have clean money, after a war?" We identified that when others have died to provide us with the opportunity to live free and prosperous, there is a guilty burden that accompanies it. Fabulously, two students pointed out that if we all followed Chris's logic, we'd all be dealing in dirty money. "I shop at H&M, and I know they use sweatshops, but I still do it. It's easier not to think about it."
Another pointed out, "If that's we use Chris's logic, than any time we buy diamonds, it's with dirty money, since people died in Africa to procure those diamonds." They continued to discuss the reasons we are not moved by the suffering we know went into the products we consume. The young man (for indeed, today they were not boys and girls but young men and women!) who raised the point said, "we're too far from them. We don't have enough reminders of them being there, suffering." Others pointed out that such consumer behaviour is normalised, and since we know everyone else is doing it, we're likely to keep it up.
Not to tout my subject area, but I feel that the literature does a much better job of bringing up conversations about ethics than any "ethics" class that blatantly posed the question "Is it OK to buy sweat shop clothes?" would. I like it when the students raise the ethical questions, having been spurred by the literature to think beyond the text. So cool.
At the end of the class we spent several minutes comparing the portrayal of money in All My Sons to the portrayal of money in other plays we've studied. Ameer pointed out that the doctors who made money unethically in "The Doctor's Dilemma" had no qualms about what they were doing. They didn't distinguish between clean and dirty money. That provided a salient contrast to the Keller men, who seem painfully aware that they are implicated in the "crime of prosperity" that underscored post-war American life in the comfortable suburbs.
We returned for a moment to Bosola to consider whether the money he earned for spying was "dirty". Everone said "Yes" at first, which is rare. Of course, my heart jumped out because I have a soft spot for Bosola. I pushed them on it, saying "You said if someone works hard for the money, it's clean. No one works harder than Bosola in Duchess." One of the smartest students in the class said, "I don't know how to define dirty money." I think that for the other students to hear someone who is usually so confident admit uncertainty was important. My repeated assurance that "It's ok not to know!" is surely much more powerful coming from a star peer.
So I decided to make the lesson about dirty money.
Here's how class went.
"Do you know what a haiku is?"
(some general ideas - it's a poem, it's short)
We established that it was Japanese poetry form consisting of three lines: the first and third lines have 5 syllables, the second line has 7 syllables.
Then I asked them all to write haikus. Subject: dirty money.
Here's the one I wrote:
Where did it come from?
Well, I don't want to tell you.
Where can I get some?
I didn't collect them, so I can't post theirs, but there was mention of "men inside suits", "the streets", "black market", "unearned capital", and "I'm-a get some, yo."
After delivering the haikus, I asked them what dirty money was, which led to a much more interesting conversation than I had anticipated. At first we were in rows and people were not listening well to each other, so I asked them to move into a circle. Immediately the quality of the discussion improved, and students in my smarter than smart 12-2 class pinpointed quickly the difficulty with defining what "clean" money is. Layali said that white-collar crime, like embezzling and money laundering, creates dirty money.
Others said anything illegal creates dirty money, but a handful contended that drug selling and prostitution don't necessarily earn "dirty money". If money is earned, it's clean, some said. Someone said "A teacher earns clean money." Phew! But then others pointed out that some teachers write essays for their students, and take money for that, and then grade them highly, which they said is unethical. The understanding of the class changed quite dramatically, and it became clear quickly that it's hard to define dirty money.
I asked them to look at the text to find a line that revealed the nature of Chris and Keller's relationship to money. Their choices revealed the ambivalence I'd noticed in my own reading.
Chris: "[when I came home from the war] I felt...what you said...ashamed somehow. Because nobody was changed at all. .... I felt wrong to be alive, to open the bank book, to drive a new car, to see the new refrigerator. I mean you can take those things out of a war, but when you drive that car you've got to know that it came out of the love a man can have for a man, you've got to be a little better because of that. Otherwise what you have is really loot, and there's blood on it. I didn't want to take any of it.
Compare that sentiment to this open embrace of surplus and prosperity, only a paragraph later:
Chris: "Oh Annie, Annie ... I'm going to make a fortune for you!"
For Chris, the returned soldier, money is the problem, but it's also the solution.
Analysing Keller, several students said that his repeated insistence that the money he earns from his successful business is clean reveals that he doesn't actually feel good about it - otherwise why would he force the issue so much? His poorly concealed hesitation is also contrasted with his overt embrace of material wealth.
Keller: "It's good money. There's nothing wrong with it."
"I'm going to build you a house, stone, with a driveway from the road. I want you to spread out, Chris, I want you to use what I made for you. I mean with joy Chris, without shame... with joy."
Then later, unabashed enthusiasm about his wealth:
"There's gonna be a wedding, kid, like there never was seen! Champagne, tuxedos...!"
I was so pleased that in each class students identified that Chris feels guilty just for being alive and having money, not for having done anything wrong in the war (while his father actually did make unethical business decisions during the war, which makes his money more technically "dirty").
I posed the question to the class in light of Chris's sentiments: "is it possible to have clean money, after a war?" We identified that when others have died to provide us with the opportunity to live free and prosperous, there is a guilty burden that accompanies it. Fabulously, two students pointed out that if we all followed Chris's logic, we'd all be dealing in dirty money. "I shop at H&M, and I know they use sweatshops, but I still do it. It's easier not to think about it."
Another pointed out, "If that's we use Chris's logic, than any time we buy diamonds, it's with dirty money, since people died in Africa to procure those diamonds." They continued to discuss the reasons we are not moved by the suffering we know went into the products we consume. The young man (for indeed, today they were not boys and girls but young men and women!) who raised the point said, "we're too far from them. We don't have enough reminders of them being there, suffering." Others pointed out that such consumer behaviour is normalised, and since we know everyone else is doing it, we're likely to keep it up.
Not to tout my subject area, but I feel that the literature does a much better job of bringing up conversations about ethics than any "ethics" class that blatantly posed the question "Is it OK to buy sweat shop clothes?" would. I like it when the students raise the ethical questions, having been spurred by the literature to think beyond the text. So cool.
At the end of the class we spent several minutes comparing the portrayal of money in All My Sons to the portrayal of money in other plays we've studied. Ameer pointed out that the doctors who made money unethically in "The Doctor's Dilemma" had no qualms about what they were doing. They didn't distinguish between clean and dirty money. That provided a salient contrast to the Keller men, who seem painfully aware that they are implicated in the "crime of prosperity" that underscored post-war American life in the comfortable suburbs.
We returned for a moment to Bosola to consider whether the money he earned for spying was "dirty". Everone said "Yes" at first, which is rare. Of course, my heart jumped out because I have a soft spot for Bosola. I pushed them on it, saying "You said if someone works hard for the money, it's clean. No one works harder than Bosola in Duchess." One of the smartest students in the class said, "I don't know how to define dirty money." I think that for the other students to hear someone who is usually so confident admit uncertainty was important. My repeated assurance that "It's ok not to know!" is surely much more powerful coming from a star peer.
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