This story has all sorts of implications for our current politicised and chaotic world. It is also a major lesson for the media and their infatuation with the “sensational” above all other considerations, including the truth and ethical behavior. I cite the media as the major entity that is complicit in saturating our every waking moment with sensationalism, and worse, trying to make us feel unpatriotic, intellectually stupid and anti-social if we don’t participate in their game. Whoever the teacher in this story is, his technique deserves to be replicated far and wide, as well as often. We need the constant reminder that his lesson taught his class.
The story starts with a girl coming home after school and telling her mother about the lesson in question.
“Mom, you’re not going to believe what happened in history class today.”
The teacher told the class they were going to play a game. He walked around the room and whispered to each kid, asking whether they were a witch or just a regular person. He then gave instructions: “Form the biggest group you can without a witch. If your group has even one witch, you all fail.” The girl explained to her mother that the whole room instantly lit up with suspicion.
Everyone started interrogating each other. Are you a witch? How do we know you’re not lying?
Some kids clung to one big group, but most broke off into smaller, exclusive cliques. They turned away anyone who seemed uncertain, nervous, or gave off even the slightest hint of being guilty of being a witch. The energy shifted fast. Suddenly, everyone was suspicious of everyone.
Whispers. Finger-pointing. Side-eyes. Trust dissolved in minutes.
Finally, when all the groups were formed, the teacher said, “Alright, time to find out who fails. Witches, raise your hands.”
Not one hand went up.
The whole class exploded. “Wait! You messed up the game!”
And then the teacher dropped the bomb: “Did I? Were there any actual witches in Salem, or did everyone just believe what they were told?”
The daughter said the room went dead silent.
That’s when it hit them. No witch was ever needed for the damage to happen. Fear had already done its work. Suspicion alone divided the entire class, turning community into chaos.
And isn’t that exactly what we’re seeing today from the media and the politicians? Different words, same playbook. Instead of “witch,” it’s liberal, conservative, vaxxed, unvaxxed, pro-this, anti-that. The labels shift, but the tactic is the same. Get people scared. Get them suspicious. Get them divided. Then sit back while trust crumbles.
The danger was never the witch. The danger is the rumor; the suspicion; the fear; the planted lies.
The lesson is: Refuse the whisper. Don’t play the game, because the second we start hunting “witches” we’ve already lost.
If we could manage to apply this lesson to the daily/hourly/minutely bombardment we get from the media in their constant battle to outdo their media competition in sensationalism, we might have better mental health, better lives and eventually (heaven forbid), better political and social systems. I might say better politicians as well, but that is too much of a stretch for even the most optimistic of optimists. Our education system tries to teach us to think, and to combat the issues raised by this teacher’s lesson requires us to think. The system’s not doing a very good job.
In today’s world, the value of education, and the ability to think, is even more important. The current U.S. Administration plans to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education because, as I have often said, that the last thing a politician wants is an educated electorate. The more ignorant the population, the easier they are to control with rumors and misinformation. The teacher’s lesson that the girl reported to her mother is a great example of the danger we face.
