Lesson Plan – Calvin and Hobbes

CALVIN & HOBBES

Imitation smacks of unoriginality and suppresses your true self.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said in his essay, Self-Reliance, that “imitation is suicide;” meaning that by trying to live according to another’s standards is death to one’s individual soul and self. Imitation smacks of unoriginality and suppresses your true self. It today’s media driven society, it is no wonder that teenagers especially are victims of identity death. It takes hard work and plenty of self-awareness to stay true to your mettle.

The Transcendentalists believed that knowing came through experience, and that the only way to TRANSCEND our worldly understanding was to quiet the busyness of our minds and allow our intuitive and emotional spirits to awaken a deeper understanding of self, society, education, nature, and government. In other words: don’t think, but do.

The concepts advanced by the Transcendentalists of the 19^th century are difficult for contemporary adolescents to understand, although this is the time in their lives when they are most free and open to absorb them. In order to help illustrate the ideas of: self-reliance, non-conformity, carpe diem, civil disobedience, and the transformative & restorative power of nature, consider using contemporary texts and pop-culture media with students.

Believe it or not, we have a generation of students who are discovering the comic strip, Calvin & Hobbes by Bill Watterson, for the first time. Those of us who grew up with these transcendental philosophers can see right away how closely the strip marries to Emerson and Thoreau. This complementary text paring makes for a great lesson. Here is my lesson: feel free to modify and make it your own. It can be as simple as a small unit in your scope and sequence, or it can be expanded into a larger Project Based Learning idea (close your eyes and picture Thoreau’s cabin at Walden……now, picture Calvin’s G.R.O.S.S treehouse…..see? Separation from society? Go into the woods to live deliberately? Be able to be alone? It fits. And, more importantly, it WORKS).

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