Recognizing the awesomeness of Model United Nations, and

This week, I got to send two days helping chair committee meetings for Model United Nations, and it occurred to me while I was in this meetings that MUN is one of the greatest collaborative activities available to high school students.  If you're not familiar with the program, it works like this:

1. High schools from around the state (and beyond) choose a particular country to represent, and then here at UNI, we brainstorm issues that are discussed in the real United Nations.  (Some of this year's issues included Gender Roles: Negotiating the Conflicting Roles of Women in Religion and Government Laws and Regulations, Pandemic Influenza, and Combating Misinformation in AIDS treatment.  A full list of this year's topics is available here.  Incidentally, I would dare anyone who thinks high schoolers are unintelligent and apathetic to listen to these students speak and debate on these issues for five minutes.  I'm fairly certain they would think differently afterward.)

2. Members of MUN at each of the schools research the issue and write a position paper explaining and justifying their country's viewpoint on the issue.

3. The high schoolers all come here for two days, break apart into committees and debate and collaborate with other high schoolers they've never met to come up with amendments and resolutions to solve the issues.  They have to use parliamentary procedure, and they don't argue their own viewpoint, they represent their country's view.  The amendments usually read something like "Endorsing the use of sanctions in dealing with hostile nuclear states, and"  (For the record, the "comma and" appears on every single amendment and is a bit of an inside joke among MUN teams, so the title of this blog entry is not actually a typo, but a tribute to MUN.)

Watching these high schools seriously debate these issues is one of the coolest things I've seen in a long time, especially as someone who's going into teaching.  They gain debate skills (especially how to argue for something they might not personally agree with), public speaking skills, collaboration skills (they can't pass amendments without a majority plus one vote), and they gain a much better understanding of an organization that has tremendous power in the real world.  They do get really into it, and it is fantastically exciting to see a junior in high school stand in front of her peers to offer a possible solution to preventing the spread of pandemic influenza and answer difficult questions from her peers. 

This is something I would love to use in my classroom, and I think the Internet makes it possible to take this activity to the next level.  Instead of having people from around the Midwest, you could have students from around the world act as delegates in United Nations through video conferencing or similar technologies. Students could gain an incredible global perspective from doing something like this.    

(Image of the UN Headquarters in New York City from flickr.com by United Nations Photo)