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Teacher simulates an authoritarian dictatorship in her classroom, but the students crushed her

It went along with the students reading "1984."

via Fibonacci Blue/Flickr

Students at a protest.

Each year that I teach the book "1984," I turn my classroom into a totalitarian regime under the guise of the "common good." I run a simulation in which I become a dictator. I tell my students that in order to battle "Senioritis," the teachers and admin have adapted an evidence-based strategy, a strategy that has "been implemented in many schools throughout the country and has had immense success." I hang posters with motivational quotes and falsified statistics, and provide a false narrative for the problem that is "Senioritis."

"1984" is a book by George Orwell, written in 1949, about a fictional future where a totalitarian regime watches over everyone, rewrites history, and controls what people think. The film's protagonist, Winston Smith, quietly rebels against the regime in an attempt to regain hope, freedom, and truth. It has become essential reading for students worldwide as a blueprint for recognizing the tactics used by authoritarians.

I tell the students that in order to help them succeed, I must implement strict classroom rules. They must raise their hand before doing anything at all, even when asking another student for a pencil. They lose points each time they don't behave as expected. They gain points by reporting other students. If someone breaks the rule and I don't see it, it's the responsibility of the other students to let me know. Those students earn bonus points. I tell students that in order for this plan to work they must "trust the process and not question their teachers." This becomes a school-wide effort. The other teachers and admin join in.

senioritis, fascism, authoritarianism, danger sign, experaments, Senioritis is dangerous for everyone.Photo by Diana Leygerman used with permission

I've done this experiment numerous times, and each year I have similar results. This year, however, was different.

This year, a handful of students did fall in line as always. The majority of students, however, rebelled.

By day two of the simulation, the students were contacting members of administration, writing letters, and creating protest posters. They were organizing against me and against the admin. They were stomping the hallways, refusing to do as they were told.

The president of the Student Government Association, whom I don't even teach, wrote an email demanding an end to this "program." He wrote that this program is "simply fascism at its worst. Statements such as these are the base of a dictatorship rule, this school, as well as this country cannot and will not fall prey to these totalitarian behaviors."

I did everything in my power to fight their rebellion.

fascism, authoritarianism, danger sign, experaments, see something, say something, 1984If you see something, say something.Photo by Diana Leygerman used with permission

I "bribed" the president of the SGA. I "forced" him to publicly "resign." And, yet, the students did not back down. They fought even harder. They were more vigilant. They became more organized. They found a new leader. They were more than ready to fight. They knew they would win in numbers.

I ended the experiment two days earlier than I had planned because their rebellion was so strong and overwhelming. For the first time since I've done this experiment, the students "won."

What I learned is this: Teenagers will be the ones to save us.

1984, george orwell, 1984 mural, ice cream, barcelona, spain, literatureYoung folks enjoying some ice cream outside of a George Orwell mural. via Adam Jones/Wikimedia Commons

Just like Emma Gonzalez, the teen activist from Marjory Stoneman Douglas, my students did not back down nor conform. They fought for their rights. They won.

Adults can learn a lot from the teens of this generation. Adults are complacent, jaded, and disparaged. Teenagers are ignited, spirited, and take no prisoners. Do not squander their fight. They really are our future. Do not call them entitled. That entitlement is their drive and their passion. Do not get in their way. They will crush you.

Foster their rebellion. They are our best allies.

This story originally appeared on Medium and is reprinted here with permission. It was originally published seven years ago.

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Over a hundred thousand Hong Kong citizens held hands forming a human chain of unity

Image via Reddit

It's hard to find positive news in Hong Kong these days. Every day, the world watches with growing anxiety as its citizens bravely stand up against what they consider the oppressive hand of China. So much of that anxiety stems from the unknown: if China cracks down on Hong Kong will anyone stand up for the political dissidents? Yet, that same uncertainty is also the source of some incredible inspiration.

Over one-hundred thousand protesters in the semi-autonomous city of Hong Kong formed a human chain that snaked its way through the city and up the famous Lion Rock hill, in protest against the Chinese mainland government's attempt at more centralized rule over the city. The visuals from the spectacle, much like the unyielding struggle for freedom around the globe, are impossible to ignore.


Organizers of the protest were inspired by the "Baltic Way," a similar protest in 1989 in which citizens across Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia formed a human chain of nearly two-million people across 419 miles to pressure the Soviet government in Moscow into giving them autonomy and the right to self-government. It was a significant event at the time and the hope is that following in those footsteps now will keep international attention on the situation in Hong Kong.


Hong Kong has been under Chinese control since 1997, when the British handed it back to Chinese authorities after 100 years of control. At the time of the handover Beijing promised a policy of "one country, two systems" designed to let Hong Kong keep most of the legal and economic structures that were in place during British rule. But, in the decades since the Communist Party of China, China's ruling political party, has instituted a number of changes that are geared more toward "just one system."


RELATED: A teenager took advantage of Popeyes' long chicken sandwich lines by registering people to vote

This is the 12th consecutive weekend of protests in reaction to a new extradition bill introduced by Beijing that would allow the government to prosecute criminal and civil cases in mainland courts. These courts are seen by many as tools used by central communist authorities to stifle dissent and free speech. The protests have at times been peaceful, as in this case, and tumultuous like when protesters stormed the Parliament building and Police cracked down on demonstrators in the streets with tear gas and rubber bullets.


This is a fraught time and brings to mind the Tiananmen Square student protests nearly thirty years ago that seared iconic images of tanks rolling over protestors into the minds of people all over the world. And is made all the more salient by reports of the People's Liberation Army, the main arm of the Chinese military, holding drills outside of the city despite Hong Kong's chief executive Carrie Lam's promises that a vote on the extradition bill is delayed indefinitely.

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Here's what one Holocaust survivor has to say about the rise of the Antifa movement.

At a recent anti-hate rally in Berkeley, Joey Gibson, leader of the extreme right-wing, white supremacist group, Patriot Prayer, strolled directly in front of me, his three burly bodyguards in tow.

A few people nearby pointed him out, shouting his name.

I had an immediate visceral reaction to the sight of this man, whom I consider to be a neo-Nazi. To my eyes, Gibson and his men were angling for conflict; their swagger left no doubt.

And I stood there shaking, my homemade sign in hand. "Hate speech leads to Holocaust," it read.

I am an 80-year-old Holocaust survivor.

We learned that the young men and women around us, dressed in all black, were trained not to engage in confrontations, except to protect demonstrators like us if we were attacked by white supremacists like Gibson.

It was my first encounter with Antifa, the movement comprised of young militant antifascists who have been vilified in some of the media for their tactics.

So even though I was afraid of Gibson and his thugs, I felt comforted — not by the presence of any police officer that day, but by the presence of the Antifa. I feel gratitude to these young people for being our first line of defense, for being willing to stand up to the hateful actions of neo-Nazis and white nationalists like Gibson.

I know from experience what it feels like not to feel protected.

And I've seen firsthand the impact hate speech, under the guise of free speech, can have. As a child in Nazi Germany, I saw young boys and girls being indoctrinated into becoming mass murderers of their neighbors. Later I learned how grown men, destroyed by fear, were rendered incapable of protecting their loved ones. I learned that a crowd could be moved to heinous actions.

From the time I was 5, I was told never to mention that our mother was Jewish. This was about the time my half-sister, my father's oldest daughter from his first marriage, unexpectedly came to live with us. She had seen her mother and stepfather violently removed from their home, never to be seen again.

When I was 8, two sinister-looking Gestapo, the secret Nazi police, knocked on the door of our makeshift bomb shelter, a converted coal cellar. Berlin was under the final heavy bomb attacks of the Allied Forces. And the men had demanded that my mother accompany them, threatening to set their dog on her and shoot her if she tried to escape.

Everybody in the cellar with us that day knew that my mother's only crime in life was being a Jew, defined not by her profession of a given religious preference but by racial law.

Yet no one dared to speak up for this mother of three young children.

Nobody said a word of encouragement as she was torn away from her children. Nobody demanded these men desist from sending one more Jew to her death in a concentration camp.

The time without our mother seemed endless. We were scared and hungry in that poorly lit, cold, uncomfortable cellar. Some of the neighbors had told us my mother would never return, and they had begun to discuss with which of them each of us children would have to live.

My mother managed to escape and come back to us. But for the rest of my life, I have remembered the fear that crept over me as I faced the possibility of never seeing her again.

Soon, the bombing ceased and the Soviet Army liberated our neighborhood. But I saw the photos in the newspapers of some of the millions who had not been as lucky as we had, those who had had no one to protect them.

I could not trust that such an experience would not repeat itself.

In 1947, my mother, my younger brother and I immigrated to Venezuela and learned there what life was like under a long military Latin American-style dictatorship. Once again, I saw how some people were scared and read how some were detained, deported, and even killed. Again, I was not sure who would defend us if something happened to our family.

And when I came to study in the U.S. in 1955, in what I had erroneously believed was the cradle of freedom, I had a real-life crash course in the lack of civil rights for people of color, the murderous laws still prevalent in many Southern states, and the education, employment, and housing discrimination in the North.

I later learned a startling truth: that the racial laws of the Nazis, which categorized me as a "Jew of the Second Degree" (due to my Jewish mother and Gentile father), were based on U.S. race laws. I had fallen for some of the powerful propaganda this country disseminates abroad through its mass media.

But I woke up and got involved. I learned to speak up and organize for civil rights, against the war in Vietnam and, later, against the many invasions of other countries and ongoing discrimination.

And now here I am, more than 70 years after walking out of that dank cellar in a Berlin neighborhood, faced once again with neo-Nazis spewing and spreading their hate and beliefs about white supremacy.

Far too many people in this country are still excluded and even killed for reasons that were used during World War II to send populations to the gas chambers. We don't have official concentration camps as such in the U.S. (anymore), but the prison-industrial complex is thriving and ever-expanding immigrant detention centers are crowded and inhumane.

So, yes, I am scared of what fascists can do. I have little confidence that local police — ever more heavily armed with military weaponry and unskilled in dealing with the vulnerable in our societies — will protect those confronted by neo-Nazis.

Make no mistake, these neo-Nazis and white supremacists are serious.

The 2017 murders in Portland and Charlottesville demonstrate that.

In Europe, different generations of young antifascists committed to preventing acts of violence to vulnerable populations, resurface from time to time.

I feel comforted by the fact that these young antifascists exist here in the U.S., too.

This story originally appeared in YES! Magazine and is reprinted here with permission.

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This short speech captured everything hopeful about the March for Our Lives rally.

We knew they'd be powerful and poignant. And they still amazed us.

From the very beginning, the student activists at the March for Our Lives on March 24, 2018, in Washington, D.C., grabbed our attention and didn't let go.

And they had a message for our nation's political leaders who still haven't taken meaningful action on gun violence:

"Either represent the people or get out," Parkland, Florida, student Cameron Kasky said, kicking off the day's string of incredible speeches. "Stand for us or beware: The voters are coming."

It was more than an inspiring speech; it was a direct call to action with specific demands — a ban on assault weapons, a ban on high-capacity magazines, and a call for universal background checks.

"This is more than just a march," Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student Delaney Tarr said soon after. "This is more than just one day, one event, then moving on."

As much as their stories have moved us emotionally, Tarr and those who followed her quickly made it clear their purpose was about real, tangible action.

"We will continue to fight for common sense. We will continue to fight for our lives. We will continue to fight for our dead friends."

But one student in particular made an unforgettable impression on the crowd.

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

When Washington, D.C., native Zion Kelly took the stage, he shared a heartbreaking story of losing his twin brother Zaire to gun violence. "Today, I raise my hand in honor of my twin brother, Zaire Kelly," he said, speaking with a clear tone of strength and conviction even as tears filled his eyes.

Kelly then asked those in attendance, "Raise your hand if you've been affected by gun violence."

17-year-old Zaire was killed by an armed assailant while walking home from a college-prep class in September 2017. Zion and his family have been working to support gun safety measures in D.C.

"Just like you, I've had enough," he said.

It was a powerful moment, where cameras captured the fact that the entire section in front of the stage was reserved for those directly affected by gun violence, connecting direct faces with the epidemic.

We saw the next generation of leaders step forward — and the future is brighter than ever.

They made us cry and made us angry with their stories of pain and frustration. But the young adults speaking in Washington, D.C., and at rallies around the country also made it clear they have taken charge of a movement that adults have failed to make real progress on.

It's a youth-driven political movement unlike any America has seen since the Vietnam War and one that is fueled by a generation better equipped to use new tools of activism like social media to move past the forces that stand in their way.

Read more on the March for Our Lives with stories on Parkland student Emma Gonzalez’s emotional silence, outstanding protest signs, photos from around the country, and moving words from little kids.

And if you want to support the anti-gun-violence movement, we have a quiz for the best way you can help.

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