Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

10 minutes	Part A: Activating prior understanding
20 minutes	Part B: Would you make a stand?
25 minutes	Part C: Write a personal reflection
05 minutes	Reflection

Part A: Activating prior understanding

Step 1.

Ask students to imagine they are a person in Omelas.

Remind yourselves of the state of the child in the basement:

“In a basement under one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas, or perhaps in the cellar of one of its spacious private homes, there is a room. It has one locked door, and no window. A little light seeps in dustily between cracks in the boards, secondhand from a cobwebbed window somewhere across the cellar. In one corner of the little room a couple of mops, with stiff, clotted, foul-smelling heads, stand near a rusty bucket. The floor is dirt, a little damp to the touch, as cellar dirt usually is. The room is about three paces long and two wide: a mere broom closet or disused tool room. In the room a child is sitting. It could be a boy or a girl. It looks about six, but actually is nearly ten. It is feeble-minded. Perhaps it was born defective or perhaps it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect. It picks its nose and occasionally fumbles vaguely with its toes or genitals, as it sits hunched in the corner farthest from the bucket and the two mops. It is afraid of the mops. It finds them horrible. It shuts its eyes, but it knows the mops are still standing there; and the door is locked; and nobody will come. The door is always locked; and nobody ever comes, except that sometimes-the child has no understanding of time or interval – sometimes the door rattles terribly and opens, and a person, or several people, are there. One of them may come and kick the child to make it stand up. The others never come close, but peer in at it with frightened, disgusted eyes. The food bowl and the water jug are hastily filled, the door is locked, the eyes disappear. The people at the door never say anything, but the child, who has not always lived in the tool room, and can remember sunlight and its mother's voice, sometimes speaks. "I will be good," it says. "Please let me out. I will be good!" They never answer. The child used to scream for help at night, and cry a good deal, but now it only makes a kind of whining, "eh-haa, eh-haa," and it speaks less and less often. It is so thin there are no calves to its legs; its belly protrudes; it lives on a half-bowl of corn meal and grease a day. It is naked. Its buttocks and thighs are a mass of festered sores, as it sits in its own excrement continually.”

Step 2.

Discuss how this makes students feel. Can they find some examples from the text that they relate to?

“these young spectators are always shocked and sickened at the sight. They feel disgust, which they had thought themselves superior to. They feel anger, outrage, impotence, despite all the explanations”
“Often the young people go home in tears, or in a tearless rage, when they have seen the child and faced this terrible paradox.”

Part B: Would you make a stand?

Step 1.

Discuss:

Would you walk away from Omelas? Would you stay? Why?

Discuss both options.

Stay.

Remember that it is a choice every day to either stay in Omelas.

“they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child's abominable misery.”

“It is the existence of the child… that makes possible the nobility of their architecture, the poignancy of their music, the profundity of their science.”
“They know that if the wretched one were not there snivelling in the dark, the other one, the flute-player, could make no joyful music”

Discuss:

“Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive.”

Do students agree with this statement? What do they count as ‘necessary’ in their own lives?

“... that of comfort, luxury, exuberance, etc. – they could perfectly well have central heating, subway trains, washing machines, and all kinds of marvelous devices not yet invented here, floating light-sources, fuelless power…”

Where are you willing to draw the line to be able to enjoy these necessities?

These citizens think that it is acceptable that some of us make sacrifices (the child in the basement) so that they can prosper.

Is this justifiable? Ask students to take a moment and apply this to their own lives, because they may currently be ‘staying’ in Omelas. Take a moment to think about what exactly it is that they are justifying by staying.

Ask students to reflect on all the comforts of their own lives that are made possible by the sacrifices of others, such as people working in sweatshops to provide them with $10 t-shirts. Some of your students may even have experiences with not having enough to eat, and living in squalor. This is a well-established part of our functioning society, whether students fully understand this or not.

Walk.

If you did choose to walk, where would you go? What stories would you tell? What would you think of those who stay behind?

Would you recommend living in Omelas? Would you recommend visiting? Is it something that can be explained, or do you need to experience it?

Help

Some students might want to stay and help free the child.

However:

“They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. They all know that it has to be there.”

The text is clear that the amazing and beautiful city of Omeals can’t exist without the child in the basement suffering on their behalf.

Do students think this is true of our own society?

Part C: Write a personal reflection

Students write a diary entry from the perspective of a person living in (or walking away from) Omelas.

What are they thinking?

How are they feeling?

What do they plan to do?

Reflection

Invite students to share the strongest line from their piece of writing.

What was the strongest point that convinced them to take this stand?

Teacher reflection

Take this opportunity to reflect on your own teaching:

What did you learn about your teaching practice today?
What worked well?
What didn't work so well?
What would you share?
Where to next?
How are you going to get there?

Define Your Position – English & Ethical Understanding

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