When you say “activities week” at school, you have in mind, first of all, museums, trips, open-air activities and so on. Well, Irina Madalina Chiriac, a teacher from 1st grade at No. 92, Elementary School, had something else in mind for her pupils.
We were delighted to welcome the children with the arms wide open and many, many sweets. But you shouldn’t think we just spoiled them. Not at all. We proposed them a game in order to teach them that the things aren’t as simple in reality as they look like at the first glance. Therefore, we simulated a trial with the “Little Red Riding Hood” theme: the children played the roles of the characters from “Little Red Riding Hood”, and our colleagues have staged a simulated lawsuit with lawyers, prosecutor, judge. “Your Honor, does the wolf deserve to be sentenced for having eaten the Little Red Riding Hood? Did it not pursue its own instinct to feed itself? Can we say an animal is bad just because it wishes to satiate his hunger? Which legal frame is the ground for convicting the facts of animals?” “Did the Mother failure? Can we incriminate the Mother for her culpability? Does the Mother aim to teach the Little Red Riding Hood to pass through life?”
“On the other hand, can we admit the Little Red Riding Hood is absolved of any fault? Did she not deliberately ignore her mother’s advice and ventured too far in the woods?” These were questions which certainly gave the children some food for thought. Anyway, the pupils’ reactions have been overwhelming in their unanimity: “I want to be a lawyer”, the Wolf character shouted at the end. We believe he felt guarded by our lawyers.
