Our spring term started on Thursday this week which left me with two days of English to play with before starting a new unit next week. I decided to do some comparison work between two different comics. It started as partner work and whole class discussion before becoming a written task in their books on the second day. The two texts being compared were World War Hulk and Captain America: Winter Soldier. I used intentionally divisive pages which see the heroes in combat almost constantly but this inevitably leads to unintentional destruction as well. My aim was to focus in on ethical choices and whether heroes were guilty of sometimes doing more harm than good but getting away with it because of their heroic status.

To start the task I asked the children to write down the qualities of a hero in pairs before discussing their ideas together. Eventually we came to the conclusion that the main way you can be heroic is to help others whilst inconveniencing yourself. The idea of self sacrifice is often great in super hero stories but I did my best to dissuade my class from going out and risking their lives!

After narrowing in on this specific aspect of heroism each pair was given both text extracts and asked to read through them before discussing what was going on in them. Identifying the events was quite simple which made sure the questions I then posed would be easier to explore, a more complicated set of events may have left some unable to engage correctly. Each question was asked separately and then the children were given two minutes in their pairs to discuss them before collecting our ideas as a class. The class discussion was my primary focus to start off with as I wanted to make sure the answers given had been fully thought out and rationalised. In order to do this I had to offer the opposing view on multiple occasions so that an answer could be fully explained.

The three questions posed were:

Are the heroes being responsible or irresponsible?

Are they being ethical?

Should they be punished or praised for their actions?

These questions overlapped at times which enabled me to make sure the discussion was as thorough as possible. A heavy portion of our focus was drawn to the Captain America panels because the class was happy to condemn the Hulk and Iron Man to making selfish, irresponsible choices in their struggle with each other. When writing up their answers one child summed up the actions of Iron Man and Hulk brilliantly ” They are both irresponsible as they are classified as heroes, they should be stopping mayhem rather than causing it.” Whilst another student explained how they were neglecting their duties as heroes ” They aren’t saving people or helping the community.” The whole class agreed the two heroes were in the wrong and the damage they were causing could hurt or even kill people, damage property and make it impossible to travel in the city.

Applying such a one sided view to Captain America was not possible. In the extract given readers see Captain America saving Paris from a terrorist attack but also causing huge damage to the area and risking civilians lives and properties whilst not showing any awareness of his surroundings. This disregard led to a rift in the discussion with most of the class unable to decide if he chose to save Paris in the safest way he could. Some felt he should have let the plane he exploded fly out of the built up area, others thought he had no choice and was only trying to help but the most common problem was trying to judge if his actions were warranted or reckless. Morals and ethics came heavily into the debate and in the end when taking a vote 11/16 pupils felt he had crossed the line and was behaving in a way that would lead to heroes being considered troublesome and unwanted in the future. The other 5 voters felt he had no choice “His dream was to save people and he did even though it made a mess,” and that his actions still saved more people and property than it damaged so it was a worthwhile risk or even a necessary one. One pupil was able to use the text to justify everything that happened by explaining ” The French government said what he done was right,” which demonstrated good use of the text to justify his point.

Although the task was successful and led to some excellent debating between students and even myself, I would approach the task slightly differently in the future. I think the extract from World War Hulk was too one sided, the lack of a noticeable villain meant pupils were happy to class them as irresponsible incredibly quickly. Next time I would try to use a more balanced extract similar to the Captain America one where you need to really hone in on whether the positives outweigh the negatives and question the ethical choices of the character. Comparing the texts was a good discussion opportunity but on reflection I chose one of the texts poorly and would definitely change it for future use.