Rebel Project, Ancient Edition, 2019

Bear in mind that the act of rebellion is not limited to America's founding fathers, modern-day political activists, self-destructive teens, or an alliance of humanoid creatures in orange jumpsuits trying to blow up yet another Death Star.

At its essence, rebelling is about changing the way people do things. Revolutions can occur on many levels, not just political economy, but also change our views on reason, faith, and morality, each of which in turn gives humanity a new way to tackle the basic problem of coexistence.

It's strange to think about it, but a handful of anonymous people who lived at the very end of prehistory were the most important revolutionaries who ever lived. Starting 10,000 years ago, a few nameless rebels like the first shepherd, the first farmer, the first baker, the first metal smith, the first weaver, and the first writer started us down a long series of radical transformations that tripled our life expectancy, split the atom, took humans to the moon, and increased our numbers from a few thousand to more than seven billion.

My thesis is this: knowing how we got here can hopefully teach us something about how to manage the unexpected radical changes that will almost certainly emerge in your lifetimes. It might even inspire you to come up with better ways of doing things and to get others on board! In short, the best way to get that wisdom is to study the lives of the rebels of the ancient world. Your work and what you do with it will test that thesis.

In this unit I will ask you to do the following:

1. Master the story of your assigned rebel

2. Explain it to everyone else in the class

3. Apply their ideas to the challenges we face today using my formula for persuasive essay

4. Discuss and debate the substance of those essays as a class parliament.

Annotation is one tool for getting more out of what you read, but there are other options. CSI is a type of structural reading is designed to take you deeper into the world of the author and their audience in order to make sure you don't miss the point. Using the same document you worked on yesterday, please do the following:

1. A first pass - a STRUCTURAL read…

For 3-4 minutes try to piece together the big picture of what the passage is all about. If you don't have that down, you'll be lost. You can figure it out by underlining or making margin notes for the following:

1. Thou shalt annotate the core claim.

What is the writer arguing for? What is their thesis?

Hints:

1. The title and context found in the blurb contained above the passage are often helpful, too, so read those first.
2. The claim is usually in the first two or three paragraphs, but sometimes it is revealed near the end or in the conclusion.

2. Thou shalt seek supports and underline a few words for each.

What evidence and supporting claims are included to support the core claim?

How does the author link the evidence to the thesis?

Hints:

1. Evidence usually is found in the body of the texts. Body paragraphs and sections are typically organized around individual examples or sub claims.
2. How does the author build links between their evidence and their claim?

3. Thou shalt seek and underline the impact(s).

Who is the document for and what does the author want them to think and what do they want them to do?

What does the author hope will change should the reader accept their core claim?

Hints:

1. All essays ultimately seek to persuade, even science articles. There is an agenda in there.
2. Often you can find the impact in the conclusion and sometimes in the intro.
3. Sometimes the writer doesn't explicitly say what they want so will you have to "read between the lines" and infer it.

EXAMPLE: A first pass reading the American Declaration of Independence should reveal something like this:

1. Claim: The American colonies seek independence, or “dissolve the political bands” in the intro.
2. Warrants: “these truths” about rights and a long list of grievances like "imposing taxes on us without our consent" in the middle.
3. Impact: The purpose was to persuade colonists to join the cause, to stick together, and be prepared to make sacrifices for independence: “we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor” at the very end.

The second pass - a closer read looking for answers and evidence for these questions…

On the top of your doc, write your answers to the questions below your work from the previous step. You can fashion your responses in imitation of the models I provide for each. Support each answer with short quotes from the document. In addition, you can use cited, short quotes from any resource from your research to prove your points. Limit yourself to no more than three sentences for each question:

1. Audience: Who was the author of the passage writing to? Sometimes the document names their audience, but when they don't, you might have to infer from your understanding of the society who the most likely reader would be.

Example: The Declaration of Independence was speaking to "the good People of these Colonies," people who were either opposed to these or undecided about whether or not to support the fight to create a new government.

Here's another:

The Urukagina Liberty Cone does not name a specific audience, but one can infer that people living in Lagash who believed in "Ningirsu, warrior of Enlil" would find the description of his career persuasive. Since it also lists lots of different occupations including farmers, boatmen, brewers, shepherds, singers, herdsmen, bakers, land-holding slaves called "shublugals" and many others, one can infer this was intended for the laborers of Lagash.

2. Purpose: What did the author or authors hope their audience would think, say, or do after reading or hearing the document? There can be more than one purpose, too.

Examples: At best, the signatories of the Declaration of Independence hoped the colonists would join the revolution and "mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor." At very least, they hoped the reader would be in "support of this Declaration," and not side with the British against the revolutionaries.

Here's another:

It seems to me that the goal of the writer was to convince the reader that Urukagina's reforms were religiously-motivated return to order. By declaring that "the fates of former times he restored, and the commands which his master Ningirsu had spoken to him he seized upon," the writer likely hopes they will accept Urukagina's laws and not rebel against them.

3. Polemics: All documents seek to change minds. What people and ideas was the passage created to attack? In addition to a quote or two from the document, you can use cited quotations from other research you've done to answer this question. Keep in mind that even science articles have some level of polemic directed against people who don't accept the findings of the research. Can you drill down to who the author's opponents are in terms of status, age, gender, wealth, education, ethnicity, belief, location, etc?

Examples: The Declaration of Independence polemicized King George III by listing dozen of crimes. Among them, the authors alleged that he "plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people."

Here's another:The Liberty Cone attacks Urukagina's predecessor, Lugalanda for his abuses of power. One notable one is this, enslaving blind people to dig ditches and wells: " When a royal subordinate on the narrow side of his field built his well, blind workers were appropriated for it, and for the irrigation channels(?) located within the field blind workers were (also) appropriated."

4. Apologetics: Who or what is the passage defending? What was the narrative that the document is seeking to respond to? In addition to a quote or two from the document, you can use cited quotations from other research you've done to answer this question. Keep in mind when looking at your article that authors often use apologetics to defend themselves, but they can also do it to defend groups to which they belong or sympathize with. Can you drill down to who the author supports in terms of status, age, gender, wealth, education, location, ethnicity, belief, etc?

Examples: The authors of the Declaration of Independence also engaged in apologetics for revolutionaries by simply not mentioning anything about the Boston Tea Party, the Sons of Liberty, the Worcester Revolution and other violent incidents and groups involving revolutionaries, many of which are described in Adam Soward's abc-clio article "American Revolution." This conspicuous silence in the Declaration was probably designed to counter the narrative that said that the revolutionaries were just a bunch of mindless criminals or ungrateful, disloyal traitors.

Here's another:In a strange way, the text arguably tries to rescue the reputation of not just Urukagina, but also the gods Enlil and Ningirsu who arguably could be blamed for allowing Lugalanda to abuse his power in the first place. The author wishes us to believe that Urukagina was the instrument of divine justice, and through him they ordained "that the orphan or widow to the powerful will not be subjugated, with Ningirsu Urukagina made a binding agreement as to that command."

5. A key question: Using a short quote from the passage, show how it helps reveal how the society you're studying answered one of the key questions.

Examples: The Declaration of Independence obviously is primarily a political document, but it also reveals the author's views on gender, specifically their sexism. The fact that all 56 of the signers were men, including the famous "John Hancock," demonstrates that women were excluded from government.

Example:

The Liberty Cone provides us a window into the busy economy of a Sumerian city, showing us "boatmen," oxen, brewers, sheep, irrigation, tax collectors, ferries, bakers, singers, priests & priestesses along with many skilled craftspeople implied by the mention of cauldrons, boats, and palaces.

6. Standard annotation v. CSI reading: Compare what you wrote yesterday with your answers from today. Please list and number anything important you spotted in this second reading of your document that you did not notice the first time:

Examples:

1. Although I've taught the Declaration many times, I'm embarrassed to admit that I never noticed how the authors made no mention of violence on the part of colonists against British officials and soldiers.

2. I've never tried to view the Declaration through the lens of music or the arts, so I never really thought about the reason for the repetition of the phrase "He has" before. It adds persuasive power.

Here are others about Urukagina:

1. At first I thought of Urukagina primarily as a rebel king, but the degree of detail in these laws reminds me more of somebody like James Madison, the author of much of the U.S. Constitution including the Bill of Rights. His reforms seem to cover just about every aspect of society. It's easy to start a rebellion, but altering the system after the dust settles is far harder.

2. The text describes Urukagina's intent at reform as to "fates of former times he restored" such as the name of the canal mentioned toward him. I used to think of him as a liberal, but here at least he sounds like a conservative, taking power to set things back to the way they were presumably before Lagalanda rather than radical change. Or maybe he was trying to conceal his radicalism by wrapping it up in conservatism, making a new reality from an imagined past?

3. Who chops down the trees that feed poor people and enslaves the blind? Only a monster. This is a subtle point, but when reading a short article that lists his reforms, a reader might miss the depth of misery created by Lugalanda. In that case one might not fully appreciate Urukagina's anger and the reasons why the people of Lagash willingly followed a new king who took power by force. Initially I imagined Urukagina as a utopian dreamer seeking to make a perfect society. But the details of Lugalanda's abuses found in this text gave me the sense that these laws were issued with a sense of urgency caused by massive injustices against the most vulnerable people in society.

I only asked for three insights, but here's a fourth one...

4. The primary source taught me that Urukagina must have been very clever and charismatic to take power in the first place. This document implies that he fired hundreds of public and religious officials. Many of them were no doubt rich and powerful and who probably enabled Lugalanda's corruption because he allowed them to steal at will from the poor. Each fired official therefore would have every incentive to do anything they could to stop a rebellion. In order for Urukagina to successfully overthrow the king and fire the whole government, he'd have to organize the uprising without any of these officials from finding out about his plans.

How'd he pull that off? It sounds like there were officials everywhere, at the granaries, the temples, the boats, and the fields. It seems like there was nowhere to hide, so where did he organize his forces? If Urukagina were caught, of course he'd have been killed, so he'd have to be crazy to try it. But his accomplices must have been numerous for him to have the power to enact his reforms, bending all these bureaucrats to his will. His accomplices must also have been very loyal for nobody in this large group to rat him out for favors from Lugalanda.

On the other hand, maybe an unwritten subtext in this story is that there were some officials who helped Urukagina, elites who like him who were willing to risk their privileged position in society and maybe even their lives for a more just society. Talk about integrity! That seems to me more likely given the sheer size of the bureaucracy implied by this text. This raises an uncomfortable question: How many of us have both the courage to stand up to such an abusive authority and are also organized enough to get away with it? I would like to think that I do, but I have never been tested in this way. I have much greater respect for both Urukagina's abilities and his personal integrity now.

And there are plenty more… Maybe you didn't think about who the audience was or why certain examples were included or excluded? Keep going until you run out.

And if you don't finish, please put in another 20m tonight for homework.

Step 5. Consequences II - the long run: How did they change the world?

Now that you've looked at both primary and secondary sources, it's time to zoom out and find the big picture, and figure out why your rebel matters. How did their rebellion impact our lives? Where can we see his or her legacy today - for good, for ill, or for both?

You can find answers in a lot of ways. If you know what their most lasting achievement is, have a look at what people are doing with it today. By googling "social security impact." I found the bar graph on the left shows the impact of safety nets on American children. I wrote it up thusly:

E.g. "Evidence of Urukagina's influence can be seen in any political rebellion that seeks to create justice. The American Revolution, the Russian Revolution come to mind, the first a rebellion against taxes and the second against a king who monopolized wealth.

His laws are also the first documented to create social safety nets. They are echoed in any statute designed to protect the weak from the strong. Child protection laws, laws protecting worker's rights, laws that punish corrupt officials, laws providing legal counsel to the poor, Medicare, Medicaid, and food assistance are all policies that owe their existence to Urukagina's innovations."

Another strategy is simply to plug your rebel's name into google news and see what turns up. Who today is invoking their memory? How and why is their story being applied in the present? Here's an example of what I found on Urukagina:

E.g. "Alas, laws that prescribe harsh, physical penalties only to women may start with him, too. In 2015, British academic Dr. Amanda Foreman published a piece in the Daily Telegraph entitled "Why I'm shouting about the 4,000 year campaign to gag women in our history books," in which Urukagina's laws were her earliest example. She expounded on his significance at length, linking him to a systematic silencing of women that runs from Sumeria, ancient Greece and then through the suffragette movement to the present:

"Their law codes, beginning with the earliest fragments from the reign of Urukagina, King of Lagash (ca. 2350 BC), show that the Sumerians were no less preoccupied with the nature of power than modern society. Among these precious fragments are two laws in particular that refer to women. One is about the number of husbands a woman may have, the other pertains to her speech. It says that a woman who speaks out of turn to a man will have her teeth smashed by a burnt brick.

King Urukagina was an usurper and his law edict was a bold attempt to establish a new social order. It’s not possible to say whether the speech code against women belonged to the new or old laws.

But what is clear is that Urukagina was offering a political bargain to the male citizens of Lagash: support me and you will have the state on your side in the battle of the sexes."

Step 6. What's the moral to this story?

Let's start by thinking about this phrase: "slow and steady wins the race." We all know where that one came from, but have you thought about why that one sticks but a lot of the stuff you're reading and watching in school is harder to retain?

One of the reasons why it's so easy to get point of each of Aesop's fables was the fact that he limited the number of characters, plot points, and details down to smallest possible number. In The Tortoise and the Hare, you get two animals, a race, a nap, a winner, and a lesson learned. That's it, he directs your focus to the essentials, leaving nothing to distract you from his core message.

But unlike an Aesop fable, the story of your rebel is messy and complicated. It's loaded with characters, confusing detail, and probably some moral ambiguity which make it harder to learn any clear moral from it.

But luckily for you, the U.S. Military has developed a way for anyone to look at a complex story and simplify it enough to learn moral lessons from it. The advice I offer below on how to do this is derived from the process created by the Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL) has used since the 1980s to avoid repeating operational mistakes. It clearly works.

1. Hunt for insights: Make a list of things that selected individuals and people they interacted with in their lives that they got 'right' and another of things that they got 'wrong.' The most important of these will feed into step two. You might conclude that your rebel is a hero that we should imitate, or a maybe they're a villain who we should strive to distance ourselves from. Yes, the words and deeds of other people who were part of your rebel's story are fair game, too.

2. Turn the insight into a rule we can use: For the most important successes and failures, think about WHAT WE SHOULD DO. What rules could we live by to ensure that the success gets replicated or the mistake gets avoided. The product is a moral, rule, adage, brocard, principle, law, or maxim that would benefit us if we followed it. Your rule needs three critical features, applicability, utility, and relevance:

A. Applicability: Your rule must be broad enough that it could apply to any time or place. We seek timeless human wisdom that has relevance across continents and the ages. By that I mean, your rule would be good advice for not only ancient Spartans, but also medieval China, and contemporary Brazil. For example, if we were writing about Hitler, you could say that the lesson would be that, "a responsible society should not classify people by race." Someone else studying contemporary Germany might write, "to be prosperous, a responsible society should be generous to their neighbors."

B. Utility: While your rule must be broad enough to accommodate all human societies, your rule must also be specific enough to draw a clear line between what is acceptable and what is not. This is a delicate balance. What do we need to do (or avoid doing) in order to stay within the moral boundaries you are attempting to set? Make sure that your rule is written narrowly enough to render atrocities like the the Holocaust and 9/11 unacceptable, unless of course you think those events were good, in which case history would suggest that you and your generation are in for a bumpy ride.

If your rule has this problem, the solution is to reflect and ask yourself what concrete actions or policies can we take (or avoid) to make sure that the "good thing" happens again or that the "bad thing" is avoided?

C. Relevance: We are looking for rules that will be useful for us to confront today's challenges. Therefore, please look for rules that would not be obvious to someone who has not studied this era. Use the "well-duh" test to see if your rule passes. If you can prove using properly-cited quotes from reliable journalistic sources that there are substantial numbers of people living today who don't yet follow your rule, it is non-obvious.

Since we can only really control our own actions, it's best to find rules that would apply to us, where if we followed them, people's lives would improve. Still, you can also look to North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Syria to find societies lead by people who in many regards have not yet gotten the memo about how to do right by their people.

As always, to help you along here are models for how I approached this step in an in-class demo using the story of Urukagina.

Step 7. Prepare an interactive presentation...

- Make sure your slides are actually LEGIBLE. Type should be bold and should stand out against the background. If your background is dark, the text should be white and when the background is light, use black text. - Limit yourself to about 25 words per slide. It is wise to assume that 1/3 of the class will not be wearing the corrective lenses they need or will have an outdated prescription, so size your text accordingly.

- Images should not be stretched or distorted, unless the manipulation helps underscore a point that you are making. You can avoid this by resizing them by grabbing them from the corner, never the side.

- MEMORIZE your remarks. I operate with the bias that if you can't explain something, you haven't actually learned it, so you will be scored accordingly. Note cards are only permitted to those who have an IEP or 504 plan that includes that as a listed accommodation.

- Did you share your slides with Smith and link them to our shared matrix? If it's not shared with him when it's your turn to talk, YOU WILL FAIL! To avoid this fate, got back to the beginning of Step 7, carefully go through each direction one my one and check to make sure you didn't mess it up.

Step 8: And during the talks...

3. Once you finish the card, then do a simplified variation on the Leitner box or "spaced repetition" study method. Thanks to the other Mr. Smith who teaches French for giving me this tip. Go through the deck of cards and review the whole set using this procedure after you make the new card, making sure that the stories are sticking:

A. Look at the name of the rebel. Without flipping it over, can you identify the new innovations for which they were famous? Can you explain what they were "sick and tired" of? Can you explain how their life impacts yours?

B. If you know it, put it on one pile.

C. If you miss something or it's hard to retrieve, put it in a different pile.

D. At the end, review all the cards you missed and put them on the top of the pile.

E. The next day, rinse and repeat. Why? In the short run there are quizzes, papers, and exams to write.None of these people are going away. Every history teacher going forward will assume that you know these stories.

If you want to go all in on this and make an actual Leitner Box with the seven categories and build a calendar, go for it, but you are not required to do so. The main thing is to make daily review of the material a part of your routine and focus most of your effort into the material that you know the least while reinforcing stuff that you're already started to encode.

Also, if you were absent or just missed the information in the talk, consult the relevant slide deck our shared rebel matrix to fill in gaps. If that doesn't do it, check out the deck on that rebel from another class or look at first abc-clio or if they're not on there, go to the links associated with that rebel above under step 1. For whatever you miss, it's your responsibility to review these materials to make sure you don't fall behind. If you have questions, don't hesitate to ask me or to ask the person who gave the talk.

Step 9. Goal setting for writing

1. Proposal: Students will take turns arguing for a rule while another scribes the rule and evidence on the smart board. The scribe records the rule with its author's name at the top in black, evidence for the rule is in green on the left, evidence against the rule is in red on the right, and the final tally of votes is in blue recorded thusly: votes for - votes against - abstentions, e.g. 14-4-2. 2. Q&A: When you finish making your argument, you take questions from everybody else in the class. Students can propose amendments or changes to the rule during Q&A, too.3. Floor speeches: When Q&A finishes, students can speak for or against the motion, adding new evidence or analysis for both sides. When considering other peoples' proposals, be sure to argue in good faith using evidence for or against their ideas. Silence, disrespect and a lack of evidence will impact your grade.

4. Ending debate: When it seems like nobody has anything new to say, somebody makes a motion to end debate and vote on the rule saying, "I move to call to question." The scribe then counts votes, the "yeas," the "nays," and abstentions and records them in blue on the SmartBoard. When the motion is seconded, the class will vote on whether or not to adopt the rule. If you vote down a rule, its opposite gets recorded as a rule.

5. What you decide matters: The results of these debates will be recorded and are open to future revision. You will need to use them on your exams. Stay tuned!