Casey Edward Hall

Students will:

1. experience and analyze the pros and cons of a dictatorship; and

2. apply these ideas to their understanding of life in ancient Rome.

For this lesson, you will need:

• chart paper

1. Explain to your students that the most famous general of the Roman Republic was Julius Caesar. He defeated all of his rivals and eventually ruled Rome as a permanent dictator. This enraged the Roman senators, who eventually arranged Julius Caesar’s death. In this activity, your students will experience firsthand the pros and cons of living with a dictator right in their own classroom by having one of their classmates play the role for the day.

2. Discuss with your students what they believe to be the positive and negative aspects of a dictatorship. List their answers on a chart for later referral.

3. Select one student to serve as dictator for the day. Allow him or her to make many decisions concerning the daily routine of your class (who will be first for lunch, who will get the playground equipment, who is at the front of the line, and so on).

4. At the end of the day, hold a class meeting and discuss the impact of one person making all of these decisions for the class. Add any new opinions to the pro and con pro-and-con chart that you made earlier in the day. Did students’ opinions change? Were there any positive aspects to the dictatorship that they had not expected?

5. Continue the class discussion and analyze the experience. Did problems arise that they did not anticipate? How did the person who served as dictator feel about the experience? Was it an easy job? Was he or she worried about others’ opinions? How did that student feel when he or she was initially chosen? Did his or her feelings change by the end of the day?

6. Would the students like to have one student chosen every day to serve as dictator? Using the class chart as a reference, have the students write a persuasive paragraph that supports their opinion about whether or not such a change would benefit the class.

7. After they share their paragraphs, have your students apply their new personal knowledge of dictatorship to life in ancient Rome. How do they think people felt about dictatorships at that time? Who would have liked such a system and who would not have liked it? Why?

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Younger students may have difficulty handling this experience. To keep their feelings from being hurt, you can easily use a puppet or stuffed animal as the dictator. Allow this character to “make the decisions” and then hold a class meeting at the end of the day to give students a chance to share their opinions about the experience.
After experiencing the dictator for the day dictator-for-the-day activity, have your students write a story that predicts what might have happened if the activity had continued for a week, a month, or an entire school year. What problems might have arisen? How might they have been handled?

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1. Rome was an important city in ancient times. If you lived at that time, why do you think your family would want to live there?

2. If you could use a time machine to go back to ancient Rome, what clothes would you pack to wear? What items would you want to take for your home so that you would be comfortable?

3. Many items from ancient Rome are still used today. If an ancient Roman traveled in your time machine back to today, what things would he recognize?

4. The United States conducts a census every few years. What is a census? Why do you think the ancient Romans conducted a census?

5. During the Roman republic, the citizens experienced two types of government. What were they and how were they different? Which do you think that you would prefer and why?

6. Members of the Roman senate weren’t paid for their work. They wanted to serve because they thought it was an honor to be chosen for the job. How are our senators chosen? Are they paid? Do you think they should be? Why?

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