"Walk the Plank"

We recently did an activity in sociology class, in which we acted out roles of different individuals during a ship wreck. This experiment was based off a real event where the passengers on the sinking ship had to vote people off because only so many could fit on the life raft. So we went through the experiment, mostly voting of the annoying kids playing the roles rather than the actual idea of the person they were roll-playing. It was a cool little fun experiment. But what we didn't know, was that our teacher had done this experiment over 50 times and he kept records of the experiment's outcomes. After we finished, our teacher wrote the accumulated data over the years on the board. Over the 10 year period, the many different classes, with different people, who have never talked to each other, had very, very similar outcomes. The Data of the experiments showed that most of the time, the people voted off the life raft consisted of those who were either old, injured, handicapped, or of no use to the survival of everyone in the situation. So these people who could have had families, fascinating backgrounds, done brilliant, wonderful things in their lifetime were judged by their current outer appearance, and forced to "Walk the Plank" so to speak. This activity had me thinking about so many people that are withheld of their true potential just because of how they are portrayed. Their are so many people that could be of  great use in our lives, that we just ignore because they, at first, appear to be no "use" for us. In my own life, I have had teachers that at first I would have never taken seriously in a million years based off their looks or personality, but have taught me crucial life lessons, have helped me overcome hardships, and have really prepared me for the world. This lesson really highlighted the idea of Sociological Mindfulness, ( a lesson I already thought I understood), for me, and really further explained the several different angles of the concept. I really enjoyed this activity and lesson in life.