"Civilized" Debate

 During my Grade 4 class on Gulliver's Travels today, we explored the strange and arcane world of the Houyhnhmns, horse-like creatures who we presume are more "civilized" in manner than both the Yahoos and humans combined. I had the students pick one of the three kinds of beings and explore what it means for them to be "civilized" or "uncivilized", as well as why cultures choose to use these terms, and what function it might serve. After the students came up with their answers, I plotted them on a diagram to show the overlaps and differences in how they define "civilized". More importantly, I explored the ambiguities and even dangers of this term. What does it mean when some students associate civilization with "manners" while others tend to swing toward technological prowess or ability to use money? As I was doing the exercise with the students, I was beginning to realize that people might tend to associate civility with their own customs, rather than having an objective idea of what the term means. As with many terms that are often bandied about in political discussions, this word tends to be a bit slippery. It certainly got the students to think about their ideas and dialogue about how the term is often used to discriminate one group of people from another. I would have to say that this kind of debate proved to be healthy and thought provoking for the students and myself as well. I also noticed that children of that age do like games, and it was hard for me to lead the powerpoint before it, since they were definitely anticipating the games.
   I am not too sure why "debate" is so appealing to students. Part of me wonders if perhaps the exercise of debate on civilization is actually feeding into the tendency to form "factions" around us vs. them. Is even the very notion of "civilization" a rather dated concept in a time when we are questioning imperialism and its tendency to dominate through a complicated logic of inclusion and exclusion? At the very least, I hope that these kinds of exercises might allow students to see the logic rather than taking that logic to be real or indissoluble "truth". In seeing the potential violence of logic (its illusion of inevitability), students might think twice or re-examine their assumptions about what it means. However, I am also aware that Grade 4 students are perhaps still exploring their own understanding of what truth is, and how they distinguish right from wrong.