High school students spent last week exploring the concepts of utopia, dystopia, and intentional communities to establish context for our upcoming novel, Anthem. To begin, individual students–and later groups–were tasked with planning their own “perfect” societies. They proposed political and economic structures and even thought about geography, climate, housing, and education. Groups presented interesting plans; high points included an economy based on a morality points system and the choice to build the society on an island as a safety measure. Next, students took a critical look at their proposals to consider the part of their societies most susceptible to failure. Many made connections to their understanding of dystopia. Overall, the activity was meaningful and interesting.
To support students’ understanding of dystopia (which is Anthem’s genre), students viewed and analyzed the short film “2081,” which is based on Kurt Vonnegut’s short story “Harrison Bergeron.” Finally, we explored intentional communities by reading a recent New York Times article on Missouri’s own East Wind Community, which is one of the United States’ longest standing intentional communities. During their reading, students practiced research writing skills: MLA format, embedding and citing evidence, and writing commentary.
We finished the week by discussing that the terms “utopia,” “dystopia,” and “intentional community” are related but do not exist linearly. One does not always lead to the other. We thought about them as existing on a spectrum–some applying more to fiction and others more to real life. I’m excited to continue our learning as we begin our novel this week.
