Ideas...

This post is mainly brainstorming and really serves the purpose to not let my scattered brain forget what it was I was thinking about...

I thought I would give the students money--of the play variety of course--on the first day of the new Civics course. I will then take 33% or so from each of them to start and ask them how to divy up the cash. Hopefully this exercise can be built upon not only to illustrate taxation, but how and why we have a government set up in the first place. I could change the amount of money I take from each student to illustrate progressive taxation... I could take polls about which social problems they think necessary to spend money on... I could then work in elections based on who the class thinks would spend the money the wisest...

I could even illustrate the differences between our republican system of government with the forms of days gone by... If the kids with the most money wanted to, they could buy their own armies and set up camp in some remote farming area (ie the middle ages). I could have the ones with the most money make deals with each other in an effort to control the economy and the govt centrally (ie command economy/communism)....

I could illustrate the revolution that is the American system by showing that our system--for the most part--is based on merit and not on birthright.

Any suggestions?

dt