The Tikkun Project
Lesson
2
Choosing Our Focus: Mapping Actors and Testing Cultural Wisdom
Concept
Traditional texts don't always name modern products directly, but their underlying concepts can still be tested for relevance against a contemporary problem, if we're rigorous about what counts as a genuine connection and mapping out who and what is actually connected to a product is what makes that testing possible in the first place.
Focus Question
To what extent can cultural, religious, or other traditional sources inform our thinking about the benefits and harms connected to products and materials?
Knowledge & Understanding Goals
Language, Strand C (Comprehension), Grade 7: Evaluate the strength of a connection between a text's central idea and a real-world application, citing textual evidence.
Science and Technology, Skills and Connections Strand A, Grade 7: Use a graphic organizer to represent relationships between multiple factors in a real-world system.
Thinking & Learning Skills
ATL — Thinking Skills: Defining and applying criteria for a "strong" textual connection; transferring an ancient concept to a modern context; visualizing a network of actors and relationships; naming a complex problem's framing questions before it can be fully answered.
Learner Profile: Open-Minded, Knowledgeable.
Context
This lesson is RINA Step 1 Select an Issue: students choose the specific product, process, or material they'll investigate for the rest of the unit. It also introduces the ANT Map (the tool for capturing what's known about the chosen product), the framing half of the TC_ "Clarify the Problem" strategy (posted and revisited frequently, not answered once here), and the Talmud Page Organizer for testing traditional-text connections.
Lesson Outline
SELECTING A PRODUCT TO RESEARCH
As a whole class, contribute ideas to a list of products that have a clear, recognizable utility and a known potential for harm to individuals, living things, or the environment. Students can browse online and post ideas to a shared platform (Google Slides or MURAL). Suggested categories: electric vehicles, cosmetics, medicines, food (processed, GMO, organic), textiles, electronics, chemicals (fertilizer, cleaning products, glow-sticks), sports equipment, wood/paper/pulp products, airplanes/boats/other transport vehicles.
Each student selects a product meeting the criteria and lists the benefits and harms they already believe are connected to it. In small groups, students share their reasoning; other group members contribute additional information to build a more comprehensive list for each product.
LEARNING TO BUILD AN ANT MAP
Introduce the ANT map: write the product's name in the centre of the page, with three surrounding rectangles labelled Production, Use, and Disposal. Actors go in circles; examples that come up in most students' maps include consumers, manufacturers/industry, the economy, workers, the environment (trees, soil, water, habitats, air), and animals. Benefits are connecting lines in green, harms in red, other connections in black, each labelled with a brief description.
Model this as a class using a short video on plastic water bottles: students build a shared ANT map together as they watch, then compare notes. Once the model is complete, students begin their own ANT map for their individually chosen product, to be extended throughout the unit as research continues.
NAMING THE QUESTIONS WE'LL KEEP COMING BACK TO
Explain to students: complex problems can't be fully understood in a single sitting — we're not going to answer everything today, but we need to know what we're aiming to find out as we go. Introduce the framing half of the TC² "Clarify the Problem" strategy: Who are the key individuals or groups involved? What is the problem to be solved? When does it occur? Where does it occur? Why is this a problem? How did it come about?
Students record these six questions at the top of their ANT map or thought-book page, with whatever partial answers they can offer today. Post a class version somewhere visible and permanent — this is meant to be revisited often, not answered once and filed away.
MAKING CONNECTIONS WITH TRADITIONAL TEXT
Display the class's criteria list from Lesson 1. Explain that traditional texts often speak to the impacts of our actions without naming today's specific products, so the task is to identify a text's essential concept and judge whether and how it applies to a modern problem. "Traditional source" can extend beyond religious text to poetry, art, or the stories of changemakers like Wangari Maathai, Josephine Mandamin, or Greta Thunberg — any of these are legitimate sources for this activity, not just a fallback if time allows.
A connection is strong if it meets at least one of two tests: the text articulates a clear rule or direction related to the product, material, or process itself; or the text addresses an important benefit or harm very similar to one resulting from the product's production, use, or disposal.
Model the process using a Talmud Page Organizer: the Honi HaMe'agel story in the inner rectangle; "What is this text mainly concerned with?" in the next rectangle; "How strong is the connection to the product I'm investigating?" (none / weak / strong, with an explanation) in the outer rectangle. Work through the water bottle example as a class first.
Provide students with a blank organizer and a set of possible texts (Mishnah Sanhedrin on the value of a single life; Deuteronomy 20:19 on not destroying trees in wartime; Kohelet 1:4 and 3:19; Rambam's Guide of the Perplexed III:48 on humane treatment of animals; Deuteronomy 22:6 on the mother bird; Genesis 2:15; Leviticus 19:9-10 on Pe'ah). Students read through the texts, then complete their own organizer for their chosen product.
SHARING CONNECTIONS
Students display their completed organizer and circulate to see classmates' connections, noting any additional texts that might be relevant to their own product. Back at their desks, they add these to their organizer and rate the strength of their strongest connection on a 1 (very weak) to 5 (very strong) scale.
Notes for Teaching and Evaluation
Introducing the ANT map only after students have chosen a product — not before — means the map is immediately useful and personally relevant, rather than an abstract tool practiced on a hypothetical.
Modelling both the ANT map and the Talmud Page Organizer with the same shared example (plastic water bottles) before releasing students to their own product keeps the cognitive load focused on one new tool at a time.
Introducing only the framing questions of Clarify the Problem now, and saving the gap-analysis steps for Lesson 5, matches how real research actually works: you need to know what you're looking for before you can meaningfully audit what you've found. Posting the questions permanently — not just discussing them once — is what makes "refer back to them frequently" an actual practice.
Widening "traditional source" to include changemaker stories (Maathai, Mandamin, Thunberg) alongside religious text is a deliberate design choice — it broadens whose wisdom counts as worth testing, without lowering the rigor of the strong-connection test itself.