I usually stick to fiction, but I thought I’d give a non-fiction ramble for today’s five minutes, with a prompt of ‘civil rights’:
I’ve been teaching a class to local homeschoolers for the last few weeks. My series ended up being titled “Ancient Romans: Life and Culture”, so we’ve been discussing a lot of, well, life and culture. My main goal in my approach was to help the kids have a thoughtful understanding of history.
Sometimes I feel like there’s an attitude, in some circles, to laugh at the people who came before us. To look at how naïve they were, how ignorant their practices could be. And while there certainly are many humorous aspects to history, I wanted the kids to see the Romans not as pointless facts or old rubble, but as living, breathing people.
I get nervous each week before class, but I think it’s been going well so far. Coming up with crafts for the end of class has been challenging with more than a couple late nights of preparation, but it’s rewarding to see how much the kids like them. They’ve been surprisingly interested in my PowerPoints, and their constant questions usually make us run overtime.
One thing they asked surprisingly little about were slaves. The Romans owned slaves from anywhere they conquered, and discussing them is unavoidable when talking about their lives. Nor should it be avoided, necessarily, since it was just a fact of life for them. Anyways, with today’s prompt of ‘civil rights’ it made me think of it.
It also reminded me of a conversation I had with my mom earlier today. She was asking about the rights or roles of women in ancient times, and suggesting that maybe I could do a class on that. At first glance, it would appear to be a major contrast from our world today.
In Athens in ancient Greece, women were essentially property. Their fathers made every decision for them, and when they were married their husband would take over. It’s not that women weren’t respected exactly (dying in childbirth was considered as equally honorable as dying in war) but they had basically no freedom.
Things were better in Rome, at least eventually. Women were still subject to their father’s will, but they had a choice when getting married: stay under their father’s control or their husband’s. This might not seem like much, but when the father died, the woman was then in charge of herself. She was free to own property, run a business, things like that.
As a general rule I don’t like talking about politics with people, but I will say that parts of the world still aren’t that far off from the Romans’ view of civil rights. I won’t rant about that, but even the Romans came around to letting women attend sporting events. Recent news has highlighted that even that isn’t allowed everywhere.
That sort of thing isn’t exactly what I want to explain to ten-year-olds, but maybe there’s a way it could work from a historical orientation. I’m not sure how many of my current students would be interested in a class on that, especially if there’s no craft at the end, but we’ll see.
So, more like ten minutes, and very much a thought ramble. Oh well, I’ll probably go back to fiction freewrites next time.
Thanks for reading!
The picture is one I took. It doesn't have anything to do with civil rights, but it is Roman. And as a side note, I did discuss musical instruments in one of the classes. This statue is Apollo playing a kithara. Although it sort of resembles a harp, it's actually the etymological origin of the word 'guitar'.
There certainly are parts of the world that still aren’t that far off from the Romans’ view of civil rights and in others, it seems that many of the rights we’ve always taken for granted such as free speech are being rolled back.
It’s the Wednesday prompt delivery team here with the challenge for today:
https://steemit.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/day-712-5-minute-freewrite-dwednesay-prompt-baby-talk
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"Civil" rights are entirely unnecessary, if the governing polity enforces existing legal statutes guaranteeing enumerated privileges. In 'Murica, "civil" right, as a concept, is merely an ideologic tool to perpetuate the arbitrary divisions of the underclass by fostering a perspective of "colored" rights as being separate, or extra, to "white" rights. Only when existing, enumerated privileges are enforced inconsistently, would there be a necessity of a "civil" rights, upon which the marginalised cling for parity. While the underclass squabble over crumbs from their masters' tables, the masters continue to enjoy their exploitation to support their plantation lifestyle.
Contrary to modern religion of anti-slavery drivel, slavery in much of the pre-European colonial societies were not exclusively chattel slavery. In elite circles of the more ancient, civilised societies, the virtue of owning a slave was a status symbol, much like the modern mercantile scum flaunt their wealth by purchasing useless, overpriced mansions, yachts, automobiles, and shiny rocks. Many slaves merely existed to display their masters' influence, wealth, and power. Only with European colonialism did the institution of slavery change in dynamics to be solely chattel slavery.
Chattel slavery exists everywhere, not merely in the developing world. In fact, due to cultural vestige within these societies concerning the institution of slavery, being a slave in these societies would be a far better lot for the slave than to be enslaved in the modern developed societies in the West and the Orient. Slavery is a sociocultural problem for the developed, urbanised world, not of the developing agrarian societies.