What I Learned In Middle School: 7th Grade Teacher for a Day

It’s 9:10 a.m. on March 7^th, and I’m alone in teacher Tom Kennedy’s classroom at Maplewood Middle School.  In a few minutes, Mr. Kennedy will return from his team teacher’s meeting, and the students will file into the classroom, their arms loaded down with books and binders.  I’ll soon begin leading a discussion in the first of five separate fifty-minute classes I’ll be teaching today.  I volunteered for this?  A whole day with 7^th graders—those notoriously diffident, disengaged, surly creatures?  Was I crazy?

It was, I admit, an impulsive decision.  My son came home excited about the fact that his 7^th grade Language Arts class had started reading Reginald Rose’s play, 12 Angry Men.  Kennedy assigned every student a juror.  Students were to evaluate this juror’s character, inner conflicts, conflicts with other jurors, and psychological evolution as the play unfolds.  I sometimes show Sidney Lumet’s film adaptation of the play in my Introduction to Legal Studies course at the College of Staten Island (CUNY).  The 7^th graders would be viewing the film after reading the play.  On a whim, I emailed Kennedy to share a few handouts he might find useful.  I also noted in passing that I would be available to come in as a guest lecturer for my son’s class.  Kennedy telephoned me a few days later.  Suffice it to say that his enthusiasm about my visit won me over, and by the time we hung up I had agreed to teach all five sections of his class the following Thursday.  I had no idea what to expect. 

My topic was complicated, but my game plan was simple.  We would first talk in the abstract about justice, law, and the role of the jury.  I would then give students the wrenching facts of Queen v. Dudley and Stephens, a famous 19^th century case involving cannibalism.  Then they would form groups of five or six, deliberate as jurors, and decide the case (see note [1] for more detail). The room was already arranged with groups of desks ringing the perimeter—perfect for jury deliberations, and for allowing me to move around, side-to-side and front-to-back.  The class periods went by in rapid succession. Classes ranged in size from 16 to 28 students.

Here are some highlights from the day:

“Ok, let’s begin. Tell me the first words that come to mind when I say the word ‘justice.’”  A few seconds pass.  Several hands shoot up.  When I call on them, I ask their names and try (without much success) to remember them as we go.  “When I think of justice,” the first student says, “I think of fairness.  Justice is about what’s fair.  Fair rules and treating people fairly.”  A second student:  “Justice is about doing the right thing; it’s about right and wrong.”  A third:  “Giving people what they deserve.”  “Order,” says a fourth.  A fifth student addresses him directly:  “I hear that all the time, order, order.  What do people really mean by order?”  Student #4 calmly answers:  “We’ve talked about this in class before.  The opposite of order is anarchy—chaos.  Without order, justice isn’t possible. That’s what I mean.”   “Ok, what else?,” I say.  “Courts,” another student adds.  “Good, now what about ‘law’?  What comes to mind when I say the word ‘law’?”  Now many raise their hands.  “Rules,” or some variation of it, is a popular response.  “What else?”   “Rights,” says another student.  “Miranda warnings” another adds.  As the discussion proceeds, I fill in with my own comments. 

Next, I ask for examples of conflicts between law and morality.  In one class, the first student to respond said something like this:  “What about same-sex marriage?  In many states, gay people can’t get married.  A lot of people think that’s unjust.”   “Yes, that’s right,” I say.  “Many people think that the denial of marriage equality is a denial of basic rights—a denial of equal concern and respect.”  I see some heads nodding with approval.  “And other people, based on their religious or moral convictions, believe that the legal status of marriage should be available only to one man and one woman.”  I see other heads nodding with approval.  I then pose a scenario in which a person has engaged in acts of civil disobedience to protest against the denial of marriage equality.  “If you were on the jury,” I ask her, “would you find this person not guilty?”  When she answers “yes,” calls come from around the room:  “No way.”  “Guilty.”  “Yes, guilty!”  The law is the law, they say, and it must be obeyed.  “We can’t have everyone taking the law into their own hands,” one says.  I then offer scenarios involving other acts of civil disobedience: a Catholic priest blockading an abortion clinic, and civil rights demonstrators disobeying laws mandating racial segregation.  The students then discuss what they would do as members of a jury.

Not every class presented an opportunity to talk about civil disobedience.  But the discussion of conflicts between law and morality always took interesting turns.  Several students in one class said that law and morality conflict when an innocent person is convicted, or when the punishment doesn’t fit the crime.  This turned into a discussion of mandatory sentencing guidelines and three-strikes laws.  In another class, a student tells me that earlier in the year they studied a case about a church [the Westboro Baptist Church] protesting at funerals for fallen soldiers.  “They were saying horrible things right in the family’s face,” said the student.  “But the court held that they had a first amendment right to say them.  Either way, there would be a conflict.” 

In each class, I tried to work in questions about the jury system.  Students readily invoked examples from 12 Angry Men to support their observations and opinions.  “Why even have a jury?,” I asked.  “Why not just let the judge decide?”  “Because the judge is only one person,” a student volunteered. “The judge can’t think as well as twelve people can.  The jurors come at it from different angels, like the juror from the poor neighborhood who knew how someone would use a switchblade knife.”  “Why does the verdict have to be unanimous?,” I ask.  Because,” says a student, “then you have to listen to everybody.  Juror Number 8 [Henry Fonda in the film] never would have had a chance if you go by the vote.”  I ask whether it is important to have different groups represented on the jury and whether the conversation in 12 Angry Men would be different if there were women in the room. Here, I was amazed by the students’ responses.  “Maybe,” “possibly,” and “not necessarily” punctuated their responses. They seemed viscerally to understand that group identities mattered, but not in any simple, direct, or uncomplicated way. 

Following these kinds of discussions, I gave students the facts of Queen v. Dudley, (see note [2]). I asked them to think about the idea that the jury can act as “the conscience of the community.”  Mr. Kennedy and I then let the students work on their own in their groups (“juries”) for about ten minutes.  Then we circulated around the room, helping students clarify positions and tease out arguments.  We offered additional hypotheticals (see note [3]).  At one point, I caught Kennedy’s eye from across the room while both of us were squatting in baseball catcher’s positions, each peering up into the face of a seated student.  On the break, he remarked that his legs are a lot stronger after only a few years of teaching.  Twelve and thirteen year olds, he added, feel much more comfortable and confident when you are looking up to them. 

It was a hectic and exhilarating day.  Social studies teacher Kate Mattson joined Kennedy in his room for a brown bag lunch.  “We have a half hour,” they told me.  “Care to join us?”  Long out of the habit of packing a brown bag lunch for myself, I declined, and headed over to town for a bite.  As I sat down with my bagel and coffee, I realized that I had just 13 minutes to eat and make it back for the next class.  Not much of a break.  For the final class period, we are joined by special education teacher Allie Goduto, social worker Beth Giladi, and principal Jeff Truppo.  All of the adults in the room eagerly participate in on the discussions and debates.  The bell rings.  The school day ends.

As I leave the building at 2:45, I think about how impressive these students are.  Almost to the last one, they took themselves, their peers, and their teachers seriously.  This type of intellectual environment could not have been manufactured just to impress a guest speaker.  These were character traits and habits of mind that had to be built up over time.  I also realize that I’m thoroughly exhausted.  I tried to imagine getting up the next day and doing it again.  It would take creativity and fortitude that I’m not sure that I have.  The overwhelming feeling, however, is one of gratitude for this school and its teachers.  Of course, we should judge the quality of a school in many different ways.  But I could be reasonably certain of a few things: the students in these classes are intellectually engaged, the teachers work very hard, and the school is doing at least some important things remarkably well.

Notes 

[1].  I began with the notion that the students’ engagement with 12 Angry Men might provide them with a foundation for contemplating the jury as a democratic political institution.  From this standpoint of political theory, many questions about the jury—questions about competence, about representation, and about the pursuit of higher justice—readily follow.  The jury is democratic in several senses.  Ordinary people are selected by lottery and empowered to make important decisions.  The jury brings democratic sensibilities (ordinary knowledge and wisdom) directly into the administration of justice. Jury deliberations also model democracy by giving people moral responsibility and encouraging them to control passions and intuitions through reasoned deliberations with others, guided by law. Ideally, the lines of influence between democracy and law run both ways.  As in 12 Angry Men, the process may change what jurors think, or, perhaps, even who they are. 

The questions we often ask about democracy can be posed about the jury:  Do the people really know best?  What is it that ordinary people know that makes them competent to judge?  How do jurors come to know “the law”?  Is the law really a set of dry rules delivered to them from on high by a judge?  Why even have a jury?  Why not just let the judge decide?  Why not train and employ professional jurors?  Under what conditions or circumstances do we get the seamy side of democracy that we call mob rule?  Does group representation (say, by race, sex, class, or religion) matter in the jury selection process?  If so, why?  Is it because people from different backgrounds inevitably see things differently?  If not that, then why care at all about group representation?  [why is it “12 Angry Men ?].  How does jury selection actually work, anyway?  Why do jury verdicts have to be unanimous?  We often embrace majority rule.  Why not here?  And there are still more questions:  Can the jury sometimes ignore the law if “higher justice” demands it?  What is the doctrine of jury nullification?  In appropriate cases, should jurors be told about nullification?  Why do we almost always tell jurors that they must follow the law as the judge gives it to them if we nevertheless leave them with the raw power to do justice as they see fit?  Isn’t it interesting that guilty verdicts can be set aside by judges, but that not guilty verdicts on the merits are final?  See Jeffrey Abramson, We, the Jury: The Jury System and the Ideal of Democracy (Harvard University Press, 2000; originally published by Basic Books, 1994).

Given that one could not hope to get much of this across as a guest in a 50 minutes class period, I settled on the plan to ask generally about justice, law, and conflicts between law and morality, and then to present the facts Queen v. Dudley for a brief jury simulation.

[2] Jury nullification can be defined as the doctrine that the jury may disregard the law, either because the law itself is unjust, or, although the law itself is just, it would be an injustice to apply it in a particular case.  Jury nullification applies only to verdicts of acquittal.  Guilty verdicts overwhelmingly against the weight of the evidence may be set aside by the judge. 

The facts of Queen v. Dudley were these: 

On July 5, 1884, four men on an English Yacht are cast away at sea, and forced to take refuge in a small, open lifeboat.  They are off of the Cape of Good Hope, about 1,100 miles from land.  Their names are Dudley, Stephens, Brooks, and Parker

They have only two pounds of turnips, and no water.  They live on the turnips for three days.  On the fourth day, they caught a small turtle, and they live on this for a few days after that.  By the twelfth day, the turtle was completely gone, and they had no other food or water, except for a small amount of rainwater they managed to catch in their caps 

On the eighteenth day, they had been 7 days without any food, and 5 days without any water.  On that eighteenth day, Dudley and Stephens suggested to Brooks that someone should be sacrificed (killed) to save the rest.  These three men understand that that someone is Richard Parker.  Parker is the youngest of the four men.  He is 17 or 18 years old, and he serves as the cabin boy.  Parker was not in on this conversation. 

On the nineteenth day, Dudley proposed to Stephens and Brooks that the four men draw lots (straws) to see who should be sacrificed.  But, again, Brooks says no, and, again, Parker is not in on the conversation.  Dudley next proposed that, if aid did arrive by the next day, then Parker should be killed.  Dudley reasoned that he (Dudley), Stephens and Brooks all had wives and children, and Parker did not.

On the twentieth day, Dudley, with the agreement of Stephens, went to Parker, said a prayer asking the Lord’s forgiveness, and then slit Parker’s throat.  Dudley, Stephens, and Brooks (too) were then able to live for four more days by feeding on the remains of Parker.

On the twenty-fourth day, a passing vessel spotted the lifeboat, and the three survivors were rescued.

You may assume the truth of the following additional facts:

(1) Parker probably would have died first.

(2) Had the men not eaten Parker, they would not have survived.

(3) There was no prospect of rescue, and the men were reasonable in concluding that the only way for three to survive was to kill one, and

(4) There was no greater necessity or reason to kill Parker, as opposed to any of the other three. 

The judge states the law to you as follows:  “A person commits murder when he or she willfully and with malice aforethought takes the life of another.”  This is the law of the country and you are bound to follow it.  I also instruct you that it is your duty to deliberate, and to reach and just and equitable verdict.”

[3] On his own motion, as it were, Kennedy related to the students a famous philosopher’s hypothetical referencing the case.  The hypothetical has two parts.  First, imagine that you are driving a train.  The train is hurtling toward three people on down the track.  You have no breaks, and you have no way to communicate with the three who are about to die.  You do have one option, however.  You can throw a switch and divert the train onto a sidetrack.  If you do so, however, you will kill one person.  What do you do?  Here, almost everyone would say that killing one person is better than killing three.  Second, imagine a similar but different case.  Now you are not driving the train, but observing it from a bridge on its journey toward killing three people.  There is no sidetrack this time.  However, here, again, you have one other option.  There is an extraordinarily heavy person standing next to you, leaning over the railing on the bridge.  You can stop the train by shoving this person over the bridge and down onto the track.  He will die, but three will live.  Is there a moral difference between these two cases?  To watch political theorist Michael Sandel present this hypothetical, as well as Queen v. Dudley itself, to his large lecture class at Harvard University, go to: http://www.justiceharvard.org/2011/03/episode-01/#watch.  

As I circulated and talked with the students, I drew on Lon Fuller, “The Case of the Speluncean Explorers,” Harvard Law Review, Vol. 62, No. 4 (1949), in order to vary the facts.  Fuller’s treatment helps with exploring whether the students are troubled primarily by bad procedure (Parker was left out of the process, such as it was) or by the immorality of killing, per se.  Was the moral obligation to die, rather than kill to survive, no matter what?  Or, alternatively, do they think that it makes no sense to talk about either morality or law under these conditions?  The article can be found at:  http://law.psu.edu/_file/TheCaseOfTheSpelunceanExplorers.pdf