Steps 2 & 3

Step 2: Obey Orders

Due to time contraints, we had to combine two steps into one day.  The workshop began in the same fashion, with students asked to respond to two brief questions about following rules and identifying the leader of their peer group.

We then turned our attention to the next piece of "Five Steps to Tyranny," which features an experiment in which ordinary people are asked to give up their seat on a train.  Students were stunned to see what happens when a uniformed official accompanies the man asking for the seat.  Each time, the person changes his or her seat.

Step 3: Do "Them" Harm

The presentation continues with the question: could you do something, even if it's against your better judgment?  Even if it meant hurting someone?  To illustrate this, the video features actual footage of the Milgram experiment, in which ordinary people are asked to deliver increasingly powerful electric shocks to "test subjects."

In the discussion that followed, students were surprised at how people were able to be pushed to do things against their judgment, just because someone in authority had instructed them to do so. 

On a more localized level, this brought up the idea of peer pressure -- and the ability of a leader or a group of leaders to convince each individual to behave in a certain way, from taste in music to clothing labels to targeting someone for bullying.  And if in that situation, could the students have the ability to stand up against the leader, even at riskk of then being targeted by the group?

Written responses were quite different from the verbal responses.  In terms of obeying orders, all students agreed that they obeyed orders, most of the time -- it all depended upon the situation and whether or not if the rules made sense to them.

On the idea of leadership, most students said their peer group did not have a leader.  They were all equals.  Still, there were a few interesting responses.

"In the peer group that I am close with," wrote one Humanities student, "there is no leader.  The 'rules' are just be kind and considerate of others.  In the peer group that I don't really talk to anymore, there are two leaders.  The rules are don't talk bad or stand up to the leaders or you're going to have trouble.  I hate that."

Respect seems to be a constant theme in the rule book.  A tenth grade student enrolled in a Special Education program wrote, "The rules of my peer group are to 1. Look out for each other and 2. Respect each other."