Reflection On Stereotypes

Stereotypes are everywhere in the world. Our ridged expectations of a community are sometimes all we know about that certain group. The students had a preconceived idea about the Harvard students being snobby and the Law students thought the students would not take the task seriously. This chapter really hit on many stereotypes throughout the chapter and how powerful it can be when stereotypes are broken. I would never think to take my class on a field trip to a courthouse to participate in a mock trial. This was very brave of Levinson in my opinion. Courthouses are serious places where disruptive visitors are not appreciated. Levinson’s bravery paid off in the end though by giving the students a meaningful lesson about the justice system. …show more content…
In middle school, one of my teachers did a similar exercise with us as the one I suggested. We had a student as a judge, one as the prosecutor, some students posed as the jury, and one who committed the crime. The student who “committed the crime” was able to pick their lawyer to defend them. Only the defendant knew if they really did the crime but could not tell the others in the class. As a class we went though this trial for a week and heard the evidence presented and had the jury deliberate. Although we got the verdict correct by stating the student was “guilty”, the teacher then explained to us what would happen if we were wrong and let a guilty man go free. At the middle school age we were not exposed to the justice system yet so this taught us the weight of responsibility that serving on a jury can inflict. This project was a great idea because it taught us how to think critically and thoughtfully about decisions we make and actions we chose to participate in. This activity also improved our persuasive essays we were working on in English because through the debates, we witnessed great persuasive techniques in action. We went over if someone does something unlawful they would have a court case where a panel would decide their …show more content…
Like I stated above, we used information we learned during this trial in English on how to write more persuasive essays. The science teacher could maybe make “evidence” or go over how the different weathers could effect the trial. If it was raining could the eyewitness really see the crime clearly enough to know it was the defendant or if it rains the evidence can be washed away with the rain. The math teacher could incorporate the amount of weeks, days, or hours that the defendant will have to serve in jail if it is a sentence of two to five