Minecraft Class, Part 1

I did introductions for my 2017-2018 Minecraft classes this week. One of my classes is 6-8 grade range, and the other is 6-12 grade range, mixing middle school and high school students in the same room.

This Friday, in my 6-12 grade class, I finished the introductions, I finished explaining what the class is about, I finished talking about how they're being graded, and I finished talking about the server mods we'll be using this year. Long story short, the server is not yet ready to play on, so I let the students either leave early, or mingle around in the classroom for the rest of the class time. 

Various students stuck around and played Minecraft in single player together, other students asked me some more detailed questions, other students took advantage of the extra time to get my help while working on other projects from other classes I'm teaching.

But one student, I noticed, was off on the sidelines by himself, doing what appeared to be history homework. 

I got a strange feeling that what he was doing was relevant to Minecraft somehow. I let him do his thing until the end of the class time, when he approached me with a question before leaving. He asked me what the government options will be when we split the class into groups. 

If you don't know what he means by that question, I suggest you read my introduction post. It tells you all about what we do in this class.

I told him the options are listed on a handout I will give everyone when the time comes, but the handout is really more of a guide than a set list of options. It includes Autocracy, Constitutional Monarchy, Non-Representative Democracy, Republic, Democratic Socialism, Communism, and Anarchy. Any student who wishes to try a form of government that isn't listed on the handout is encouraged to give it a try.

The student beamed at me and asked if I would allow him to start a Theocracy.

This is a new one. This student spent all the free class time doing history research to figure out which government he wanted to choose later in the semester. That's what he was doing all that time. I wasn't planning on covering this until at least November.

He presented to me a rather detailed explanation of how it might work, and we bounced ideas back and forth a bit. Ultimately I approved his idea, and honestly, I'm very excited to see if it takes off. If this becomes one of the groups, I want to see how it progresses throughout the year.

As the teacher and the server admin, I have power over the students that are logged onto the server. I can paralyze their characters, kick them from the server world, mute their speech, create materials out of thin air, delete and create entities and entire cities at the stroke of mouse movement. The student got this idea because my abilities in the class, as server admin, are that of a god.

Here's a rundown of what I believe a Theocracy would look like within the Minecraft classroom:

1. I would not personally be viewed as a god, but rather a kind of prophet, or messenger for the god(s).
2. When it comes to communicating with the Theocracy group within context of the game, I would be as vague and cryptic as possible, to avoid having the citizens believe their god(s) were giving them a direct order. 
3. I cannot lead the group. They must ultimately lead themselves.
4. I would only intervene directly in situations that would require intervention, regardless of the group's government. For example, in situations where classroom and/or server rules were in danger of being broken, I would intervene in their group just as I would in anyone else's.
5. The group would need a leader of some kind, to act as an interpreter of divine signs. That leader is the one truly in charge of leading the people, to follow the path that they believe the god(s) laid out for them. 
6. Oftentimes in these situations, the leader tends to be autocratic, based on who had the clearest vision from the god(s).
7. For the sake of adding a hint of higher purpose, I might actually prepare some occasional "divine signs" to clue them in to what would please their god(s). These signs would be very subtle and vague.
8. In order to help the group become organized, I might create some "divine signs" in an attempt to encourage the election of a "chosen one". But again, the signs would be very vague, and the citizens could very easily elect a person the god(s) did not intend.

I think this will not only be very fun, but it could also be quite interesting to see how the citizens of that group operate over time. Here's hoping I get to write a follow-up on this, observing the creation of this group!