Year 9–10 Social Studies
You decide how a whole society works —
then you defend the choices you made.
We are learning to
Design a society where every part fits — then explain how our constraints shaped it.
Success criteria
In your group, you decide:
How decisions get made · how people make a living
what people value · how you handle conflict, learning, and care
If every group could build anything at all,
what do you think most would build?
Talk to the person next to you for a minute.
Almost always the same place.
Somewhere modern, fairly democratic, comfortable — quietly a lot like home. That's the trap: with no limits, we just redraw the world we already know.
So you won't get a blank page. You'll draw constraints.
You can't swap them. You build inside them.
Print the constraint cards →Geography
A mountainous island. No easy way off it.
What can't this society have — and what must it build?
Two minutes. List one of each.
Can't: lean on distant trade, import food, or specialise narrowly. You're on your own.
Must: feed yourselves locally, make almost everything yourselves, and rely hard on each other.
The land already started shaping the economy — before you chose a single law.
Technology
"Pre-industrial" technology —
that means primitive and simple, right?
Hold that thought. Then look at the waka.
This is a waka hourua, mid-ocean.
Pacific navigators crossed thousands of kilometres of open sea on craft like this — reading stars, swells, winds and birds, carrying no compass and no instruments.
Pre-industrial doesn't mean simple. It means a different toolkit and a deep body of knowledge.
Technology
Hand tools and small farms, versus factories and power.
How would the government look different in each?
Why might more food than you need change everything?
Little surplus: nearly everyone works the land → few full-time specialists → simpler rule (a council, a rangatira).
Big surplus: fewer people needed for food → doctors, clerks, engineers → bigger, more layered government.
You can't run a modern bureaucracy on pre-industrial tech. The tools set the ceiling.
Contact
Your society shuts its doors to all outsiders.
Proudly independent — or a slow-burning problem?
What do you stop getting when no one's allowed in?
No trade — so you go without whatever your land can't give you.
No new ideas — so your knowledge stops moving while everyone else's keeps going.
Over time you fall behind, and falling behind makes you vulnerable. The "strength" turns into a weakness.
You'll meet these as you build — here's a head start.
A group like yours built this. What made it land:
Every part fitted the others — the land shaped the work, the work shaped who held power.
They owned it: their own roles, even their own anthem.
They could say why — naming the constraint behind each choice.
Three things, weighted evenly:
Not marked: slick slides, big words, or how complicated it looks.
Three constraints. One society. Make it make sense.