January 23 - 27

Grade 6 Social Studies: Historical Models of Democracy

I can explain how the social structure of ancient Athens impacted its political structure 

Ancient Athens is said to be the birthplace of Democracy. In the coming weeks, students will be learning about Direct Democracy (as opposed to Representative Democracy like in modern day Canada). Since the political structure in Ancient Athens was so connected to the social structure, we spent some time this week developing an understanding of the rights and responsibilities of the people in Athens in 400 BCE. Students learned that there were three main groups of people: Citizens, Foreigners (called Metics), and Slaves. They quickly came to understand there were vast differences in the rights of all these people. For example, women were not allowed to go out in public unless accompanied by a man! Slaves had no say in where they worked or who they worked for! And the only people living in the City-State who had voting rights, were male citizens! The grade six students realized very quickly that male citizens made up a very small percentage of people affected by government decisions and it does not seem like a fair system of Democracy. 

The students loved seeing their peers dressed up as Citizens, Metics, and Slaves while we learned about the social structure. We also did a matching activity and read some information from the textbook before jotting down the rights and responsibilities for each person. Ask your child about this! They should be able to share some interesting facts with you!

Now that we have developed this foundation, we are ready to begin learning about how the government in Ancient Athens was structured. We will compare this model of Democracy to the Iroquois Confederacy and Modern-Day Democracy in Canada.