Guilty or Innocent?

Tonight, a Moroccan counterpart and I ran a mock trial event at the Dar Chebab (Darija, or Moroccan Arabic, for "youth center"). I'm happy to say that it went well. We had been preparing the kids for it in various ways for months.

Before moving to my town down south down here, and soon after arriving here, I had been wanting to do projects with youths to help them develop their logical reasoning skills. So, I had hoped to help youths develop their problem solving skills, critical thinking abilities, public speaking skills, and abilities to reason logically. The last few months, I've been helping youths at the Dar Chebab to develop these skills.

More recently in the last few months, a Moroccan counterpart who is a teacher, and I, have been training some youths here in town for a mock trial event. I wrote a fact pattern in which a man was accused of committing murder. I tried to make it somewhat factually ambiguous: that is, I tried to include enough facts for each side to be able to make effective, persuasive arguments in support of their side of the case.

We had two boys who acted as prosecution attorneys, and two boys who acted as defense attorneys, all in the same trial. However, we only had them present oral argument supporting their side of the case; they did not question any witnesses. Basically, it was like prosecution and defense attorneys presenting closing arguments in a trial in the USA.

At one point, I was amazed, surprised and very pleased when we had the boys practice their closing arguments for the very first time. One of the prosecution attorneys presented his opening remarks. Then one of the defense attorneys presented his opening remarks. I didn't even have a chance then to explain the concept of making rebuttal remarks. One of the prosecution attorneys immediately jumped up and launched into his explanation of why the defense attorney's points were not valid. I loved that they were so excited about the exercise.

So, as I said at first, tonight we held the mock trial event. Given that we had repeatedly practiced, I wasn't extremely nervous or worrying about whether or not everything was going to go smoothly. The kids did very well. I asked them some questions during the mock trial, to get them to consider alternative explanations for events in the fact pattern, other than the ones they were suggesting to assert the defendant's guilt or innocence. They seemed to handle the questions well. It seemed like they thought on their feet pretty well.

Incidentally, when we started training them for the mock trial project, I decided that all around, it would be best if we held the event completely in Darija. Then the kids would be focusing on developing their reasoning skills and public speaking skills, rather than on speaking English. The audience members would understand more easily as well. In retrospect, I'm glad that we held it in Darija, which, I think, made the most sense.

I'm glad that my counterpart and I helped the kids develop and practice and display these skills. I'm looking forward to helping them in future similar activities.