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Politics & Government

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Politics & Government

Politics & Government is the study of the role power plays regulating nations, citizens, and society. The study of government helps us understand how our constitutions and institutions bind us. By contrast, the study of politics reveals how our decisions, actions and policies do or don’t reflect our laws and stated values.

Game Theory

You Have To See It To Believe It

Pictionary is a drawing game that leaves players speechless. It doesn’t necessarily favor artists or scholars but instead small groups of people who organize and synchronize their minds to accomplish a common goal. But how does that happen?

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  • Grades 4–5
  • 30 Minutes
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Context

What’s Your Intention?

Columbus made landfall on a few Caribbean islands in 1492. He met a few Native nations, noting they seemed submissive. Two centuries later, the combined population of North & South America, estimated to have been over 60 million, had declined by over 80%. In between the millennia, European monarchies used religious doctrine to move tens of millions from Africa to the Americas. Why?

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  • Grades 4–5
  • 30 Minutes
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Perspective

For Federalists

In 1787, Shay’s Rebellion rocked the newly formed United States, exposing the weaknesses of first governing system, the Articles of Confederation. Whereby 4,000 farmers in rural Massachusetts—veterans who’d served in the American Revolution, often without pay—struggled against mounting debt. Broke and busted, crying for help, how could no one realize the nation’s survival depended on these farmers’ wellbeing?

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  • Grades 4–5
  • 30 Minutes
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Change

Enlighten Me

The Enlightenment began in Europe around 1700 when scientific inquiry & observation led to natural rights, followed by natural laws. Extraordinary changes followed, inside and outside of Europe. Yet often the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. Just ask Haiti. Or France. Or Thomas Jefferson.

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  • Grades 4–5
  • 30 Minutes
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Conflict

Abomination

Tariffs are taxes, sometimes tools, sometimes weapons, that governments might add to imports and exports. For Southern states who were swimming in sugar and capitalized on cotton—two commodities based on enslaved labor—tariffs threatened to put an end to their duty-free shipping. For Northern states that aimed to compete against Britain’s Industrial Revolution, tariffs were the first step toward innovation.

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  • Grades 4–5
  • 30 Minutes
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Pre-Game Booklets For All 10 Jams

Booklet For Game Theory

Booklet For Context

Booklet For Perspective

Booklet For Change

Booklet For Conflict

Booklet For Rights

Booklet For Cooperation

Booklet For Connection

Booklet For Trust

Booklet For Creativity

Rights

Amistad

In 1808, the US outlawed the international slave trade, despite chattel slavery remaining legal across the South. Then, in 1839, mutiny aboard a Spanish ship carrying captive Africans heading for Cuban sugar plantations inadvertently wound up in US waters, forcing courts to consider if natural rights trump standing laws.

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  • Grades 4–5
  • 30 Minutes
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Cooperation

Amend

In the process of learning to get along, we must be willing to amend, or change our ways. The ability to adapt, to change our attitudes, our minds often hinges on increasing context, gaining perspective, and constantly mending the bonds that hold our relationships together. But what happens when we refuse to meet in the middle?

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  • Grades 4–5
  • 30 Minutes
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Connection

Now Hiring

The 1862 the Railway Act incentivized entrepreneurs and financiers to design a railroad that would connect the Pacific to the Atlantic Coast. But with the US at war against itself, were any men available to perform the herculean task of laying the tracks? And who would provide oversight? Either way, once the job was complete, would anyone know or even care who’d built it?

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  • Grades 4–5
  • 30 Minutes
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Trust

14,15

The US Constitution outlines individual rights in the Bill of Rights. Plus, it explicitly parses out rights owing to the federal government, across three co-equal branches. Privileges not stated go to the states. Still, 574 Native nations exist within the U.S. Where do they fit in?

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  • Grades 4–5
  • 30 Minutes
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Creativity

Republic Vs. Democracy

When Framers imagined the rewards and risks of constitutional government, they knew they had to allocate powers carefully, so that no state would feel they had less power compared to the others, lest they destabilize that which keeps us intact.

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  • Grades 4–5
  • 30 Minutes
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