Trial of Columbus Activity

In my senior level Global Studies Class we started off the year with an activity called the trial of Christopher Columbus to get our students warmed up to the concept of imperialism. My CT starts off every year with this activity, which is a product of the Zinn Education Product (https://zinnedproject.org/materials/people-vs-columbus/). The activity beings with separating students into 5 teams, Columbus, Columbus' men, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, The System of Empire and The Tainos Indians. Each group is being accused of genocide, and they are given a one page dossier that gives them the events that occurred, and outlines why they could be guilty of the charge. It is up to the student groups to look through the dossier and find various facts that could acquit them of the charge, or admitting their guilt. Additionally, students are responsible for charging two other groups with murder, and explaining why. They spend one class writing up a defense based off of the dossier. In the second period, the teacher is plays the role of the prosecutor and questions each group in front of a jury of five, made up of one member of each group that has sworn to be neutral.

The dossier's are written in a way that clearly points to the guilt of everyone but the Tainos. However this lesson really showed me just how important the opinion of the teacher is to the students.

Two separate classes went through the entirety of this activity and I was responsible for structuring the jury's deliberation. Of the four guilty dossier's, the most difficult for students to understand was the System of Empire. In order to compensate for that, my CT was especially ruthless when questioning the System of Empire group. As a result, the jury met and decided that 75% of the blame should be placed on the System of Empire, with the remaining blame laid on the three European groups. That would have been a fair conclusion BUT when asked to explain their rationale for the verdict, they simply said "well that's what you said!" By spending more time with the System of Empire and placing emphasis on it during the questioning, the students assumed that they must be guiltier than the others!

In the second class period my CT intentionally put less emphasis on the SOE and interestingly enough it only got 5% of the guilt! I was surprised at the disparity between the two classrooms, and I began to understand why my CT decided to spend more time on the system of empire. Personally, I am sure that the SOE shares a big chunk of the guilt for the genocide (which is why genocide of "savages" was a fairly common occurrence during this time period) but because it is such a complex concept, high school students will either give it all the blame or none of the blame depending on the teacher's approach.

One positive aspect I saw in this activity was that students really advocated for themselves. Although there was no real punishment, the groups really took on the character and passionately defended their position (with the exception of the system of empire who seemed to be thoroughly confused). Even when students swore to be neutral in the jury, they were actively advocating for their group. One student even stated that Columbus' men, who according to the dossier slaughtered the Tainos by hand, held no responsibility because Columbus ordered them too. Thankfully there was one other student who was from Columbus' group who fought back against that argument, and they ended up sharing the blame.

Overall, I thought this activity was a huge success. I do wonder if there is a way to help students understand the system of empire better without "teacher think" (my replacement for group think) taking over the students' thought process. I hope to use this in my future classes, it is very engaging and a fun activity for both students and teacher!