Torture on Trial.
Project Description:
The Torture on Trial project is all based on the question, "Are humans the real instruments of torture?". Throughout this project we hoped to prove how times have changed within "torture" and how we, as humans, behaved. At the beginning of the project we had two seperate sections that made up the project, one was building actual instruments of torture and the other was putting on a mock trial of each of our time periods. In the end we just did the mock trial because it was the best decision for our project overall, the mock trials needed more attention and work in order for it to be a good exhibition. Also, building the instruments of torture didn't seem to answer our essential question and we were all a bit confused on what our project stood for when we were planning it out. When we decided to do the mock trial everyone got right to work, we researched many things just like real lawyers, judges, and defendants/plaintiffs learned their roles. When we first startted the reserch process we were put in groups of 4 and given a time period, I got the 16th-18th centuries, we each found different instruments of torture and rresearch them in order to find the best one to do our mock trial about. I learned about many instruments such as the Judas Craddle, which is basically and pyramid stacked on 4 pieces of wood as if it were a table. You would have to sit on the point of the pyramid and you'd just be left there and gravity would eventually make you go lower and lower onto the pyramid. I decided to research the Salem Witch Trial, which we did our mock trial around. The Salem witch Trials were actual trials in the 1600's where people were accused of being "witches" and hung or tortured even though there was little or no evidence. There was also no law of "innocent until proven guilty" so innocent people would be killed or would have to prove that they weren't witches by getting thrown of a cliff to see if they'd fly, either way dying.
While putting our mock trial together we had to gather a lot of evidence, play roles as the judge , lawyers, defendants, plaintiffs, court clerks and even bailiffs. Everyone had their role and something to do, we all kind of worked on our own things and just came together when it was time to practice or work on new vocabulary that was court appropriate. All throughout the project we had to learn many things but what I think helped a lot was how we behaved and talked during the mock trial itself, we learned objections and how we were aloud to speak to the judge, jury and everyone else present in the courtroom. With all of this we had to know when we were able to speak as well and to who, this whole trial was put together with both a performance and information. We had to make sure it was a perfect amount of both because without presentation the crowd/jury would get bored and without information we wouldn't make grades and there would be no point to our trial. I was a prosecution attorney and had the part of bringing in the sickness ergotism into the trial, it was actually very interesting to figure out how the sickness was transferred and how much it affects the human body.
In between all the research and computer work we got to go to the Museum of Man and the San Diego Court-House, they were both very helpful in our overall research. At the Museum of Man we learned a lot about how people were tortured and reasons why they were tortured first hand instead of just reading about it and probably not understanding it at the fullest. The San Diego Court-House was another great experience because we got to sit in on actual trials and see how it actually had to look. In all honesty, I liked the court-house better because it gave us all a real example of what we had to do and it was an amzing experience that a lot of people will probably not get until they're older or won't get it at all. Putting together this project was hard and took a while but the ending result was better than I think any of us even expected.
While putting our mock trial together we had to gather a lot of evidence, play roles as the judge , lawyers, defendants, plaintiffs, court clerks and even bailiffs. Everyone had their role and something to do, we all kind of worked on our own things and just came together when it was time to practice or work on new vocabulary that was court appropriate. All throughout the project we had to learn many things but what I think helped a lot was how we behaved and talked during the mock trial itself, we learned objections and how we were aloud to speak to the judge, jury and everyone else present in the courtroom. With all of this we had to know when we were able to speak as well and to who, this whole trial was put together with both a performance and information. We had to make sure it was a perfect amount of both because without presentation the crowd/jury would get bored and without information we wouldn't make grades and there would be no point to our trial. I was a prosecution attorney and had the part of bringing in the sickness ergotism into the trial, it was actually very interesting to figure out how the sickness was transferred and how much it affects the human body.
In between all the research and computer work we got to go to the Museum of Man and the San Diego Court-House, they were both very helpful in our overall research. At the Museum of Man we learned a lot about how people were tortured and reasons why they were tortured first hand instead of just reading about it and probably not understanding it at the fullest. The San Diego Court-House was another great experience because we got to sit in on actual trials and see how it actually had to look. In all honesty, I liked the court-house better because it gave us all a real example of what we had to do and it was an amzing experience that a lot of people will probably not get until they're older or won't get it at all. Putting together this project was hard and took a while but the ending result was better than I think any of us even expected.
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Excerpts from Final Project Binder:
Family of Survivors:
The Family of Survivors project was narratives we wrote about past struggles that a family member went through. We started off with this because it showed how past struggles were overcome and how they were simply dealt with at different times. To write these narratives we had to interview at least two people in our family, through these interviews I feel I got to know a lot more of my grandma and dad. My grandma's struggles as a kid, mom, and teacher were very distinct from my dad's job hunting and state of living but I got to see how they were both so different and similar. During my first interview, which was with my grandma, I learned to ask questions and pause and see if they were comfortable answering and if not moving on and also how to make it seem like a conversation and not much of an interview. Through the writing process itself I will admit that I didn't understand why we had to do 5 drafts and thought it was a bit pointless but looking back through the drafts I can see why they were necessary. Each draft had to be critiqued by someone different and they each had something different to look for in the narrative, I think this especially helped because the person critiquing didn't have to focus on the whole narrative but on a certain thing which let them critique it to the best of their abilities. Family history and the concept of survival applies to our greater themes of torture because even though our family members didn't exactly have to go through physical torture or something that caused their leg to be amputated, their struggles show how they were survivals on their on which was also an essential question. (What does it mean to be a true survivor?)
Flatland by A. Square:
Flatland is not your average book, it uses shapes and very different ways to describe Europe in the 1800's. It shows how an average person(A.Square) would have gone out to explore and find out certain things, they would get punished/jailed/executed. When reading Flatland you'll have to go back and read it a couple of times until you fully understand the double meaning of everything, it a challenging read but it was interesting to find out what things actually meant. Using shapes I think was what made it difficult but an interesting read all together, it helped me visualize a lot more and think about what I was reading instead of just blankly reading. In the book it uses circles as the top of the class while lines are at the bottom and are women, which is how it used to be back then, but then it goes on to say that when the lines(women) sneezed they'd stab until anyone around them and kill them; there's things like that, that can confuse you but when you see the meaning behind it everything becomes crystal clear.
Two of the main themes from the book were gender roles and knowledge=power. Gender roles is a big part of Flatland because A.Square was in Flatland, went to LineLand, Dotland and Spaceland and in all those places women were lower. In Lineland women were represented as dots, and it's crazy to think that women were only used for anything except marriage, babies and cleaning back then when in our last presidential election a woman almost won. I don't find it fair at all that women were treated like this and am very much content with the fact that now it is not like that. Flatland does a very good job of explaining the gender roles because it flat out shows that women were always lower instead of sugar-coating things and trying to give fake reasons to why times were like that. The other theme that I thought was greatly shown throughout the whole book was knowledge equals power because I feel that what A.Square explored and found out, the circles already knew and just didn't want anyone else to know so that they could have the most knowledge meaning the most power or that they didn't know and when A.Square went to convince them about everything he'd seen and learned they panicked an had no choice but to lock him away so that he didn't know more than them and taking over all of Flatland. I feel that knowledge=power still happens today because when people know something that others don't they're suddenly full of attention and get certain things in order for them to spill whatever they're holding in, giving them power; this is seen everywhere, from high school drama to governmental issues.
Two of the main themes from the book were gender roles and knowledge=power. Gender roles is a big part of Flatland because A.Square was in Flatland, went to LineLand, Dotland and Spaceland and in all those places women were lower. In Lineland women were represented as dots, and it's crazy to think that women were only used for anything except marriage, babies and cleaning back then when in our last presidential election a woman almost won. I don't find it fair at all that women were treated like this and am very much content with the fact that now it is not like that. Flatland does a very good job of explaining the gender roles because it flat out shows that women were always lower instead of sugar-coating things and trying to give fake reasons to why times were like that. The other theme that I thought was greatly shown throughout the whole book was knowledge equals power because I feel that what A.Square explored and found out, the circles already knew and just didn't want anyone else to know so that they could have the most knowledge meaning the most power or that they didn't know and when A.Square went to convince them about everything he'd seen and learned they panicked an had no choice but to lock him away so that he didn't know more than them and taking over all of Flatland. I feel that knowledge=power still happens today because when people know something that others don't they're suddenly full of attention and get certain things in order for them to spill whatever they're holding in, giving them power; this is seen everywhere, from high school drama to governmental issues.
Poisons, Toxins, and Chemical Weapons:
The Poisoner's Handbook is a book that has many chapters on different elements and how they were used to poison people back in time. I got the Radium chapter which taught me that radium can make your bones physically crumble and rot while they are still in your body by inhaling it or by eating it. My chapter included the story of the watch makers, the story was about how there was a lot of women helping make watches for war. At first, they made pocket watches but they started falling out of the soldiers pockets and weren't very useful, then they started making wrist watches but in the dark while hiding or at night the soldiers couldn't read the time so they used radium to fix that problem since it glow in the dark. The women would use their mouths/tongues to make sure the paintbrushes were nice and pointy since back then they did have to do everything my hand. After a while of dipping the paintbrushes in the radium and in their mouths again and again some women started getting sick, more and more women started getting sick. They never really paid attention to it and eventually the factory shut down. A couple years later(3-5 years) the women that hadn't passed away from the factory were awfully sick or on their death beds. That's when they made the connection that they'd all worked at the factory, when they investigated everything they found out that it was indeed radium. While researching they found that even after 5 years radium was still in the women's systems and that it's half-life was 1600 years. After participating in the Jigsaw activity, which is just that everyone reads one chapter and then we all share what we learned in our chapter so that everyone basically learns the same thing, I learned a lot about different poisonous elements and how they related or differed from my element.
The EOD Technician's lecture on chemical weapons was very informative and was actually very interesting. We learned why things do what they do when out together and what not to do in certain situations. The Geneval Protocal is basically a treaty saying that no one in the world is aloud to use chemical weapons. Chemical weapons unleashed terror out into the world because chemical weapons unleash chemical and chemical don't usually stay in one spot and when used they create a mass attack unlike gunfire. The only good thing that came out of chemical weapons was probably that state parties had to be more responsible on the methods of war and how they approached certain things but other than that chemical weapons should've never been made or used.
The EOD Technician's lecture on chemical weapons was very informative and was actually very interesting. We learned why things do what they do when out together and what not to do in certain situations. The Geneval Protocal is basically a treaty saying that no one in the world is aloud to use chemical weapons. Chemical weapons unleashed terror out into the world because chemical weapons unleash chemical and chemical don't usually stay in one spot and when used they create a mass attack unlike gunfire. The only good thing that came out of chemical weapons was probably that state parties had to be more responsible on the methods of war and how they approached certain things but other than that chemical weapons should've never been made or used.
Reflection:
My cohort and I worked very hard to answer the essential questions for our project and honestly I think we did a great job. We both tried to incorporate it as much as possible into our trials and try to make is show in the trial by wording things differently and asking how things that would've answered them or given an idea of what we were leading up to. I am most proud of my role in the trial and how I brought up ergotism because I worked really hard to learn as much as possible about it to make it seem informational but with a bit of presentation. I think I'd go back an re-do the chemical weapons studies because I don't think I got as much out of it as I could've and looking back it might be something that interests me. The most important thing that I learned within these 10 weeks of project is that you're gonna have to work together at one point or another and that makes everything a lot easier and just a better experience overall. Also, that there are things you're going to have to do in order to make that ending result better, even if it's cutting out the "fun" parts, but it'll all be worth it in the end. I think the one I personally developed most in was be uncomfortable because I took the "doctor/attorney" role which meant I had to talk during both cross examinations and to the jury to try and convince them with my knowledge on ergotism. I think that I grew a lot in taking action as well because I don't think I would've ever volunteered to take that part before this project. This project made me more open to new things and a lot closer to my team and teachers, up to this project it's been amazing and I hope it stays this way all year.