Jason's Story
Copyright© 2025 by writer 406
Chapter 15
Principal Jessica Hart slipped into the back of Jason Stone’s first-period class to observe her new teacher in action. She had high expectations.
He stood at the front of the room as students settled into their circle. Before class, he’d placed yellow sticky notes under exactly half the desks—fourteen out of twenty-eight.
“Before we start today,” Jason said, “I want everyone to check under your desks. If you find a yellow sticky note, bring it up here and stand along the wall.”
Students looked puzzled but complied. Fourteen confused teenagers made their way to the front: Ashley, Marcus, Derek, Jenny, Maria, Carlos, and eight others, holding their sticky notes.
“Congratulations,” Jason said solemnly. “The Black Death has come to our little village. All of you have died horribly in seven days’ time.”
The standing students looked shocked. The seated students stared at their classmates with dawning comprehension.
“Let that thought sink in,” Jason continued, his voice serious. “Half the people you know—half your friends, half your family members, half your neighbors—dead in seven days. Gone. Forever.”
The room was completely silent. Jessica leaned forward, intrigued by the visceral impact of the demonstration.
“You all know about the Black Death, of course. You’ve read about it, heard the statistics. But a historian digs deeper.” Jason looked around the room at the remaining fourteen students. “Those of you remaining would have no understanding of what had just happened. God’s will, the priests said. Somehow, you guys must have really made Him mad.”
He pointed to the seated students. “You’d look for a solution. There must be a reason. You’d talk amongst yourselves. Why has God done this to us? What caused this horrible plague?”
Jason walked over to Becky, one of the seated students, and put his hand on her shoulder. “You might look at Becky here. She is the village midwife. The wise woman with knowledge of herbs and potions.”
“The whispers would start in the village
I bet she’s made a deal with the devil. She’s a witch. That’s where she’s got all that knowledge about healing and babies. That’s why she survived when good people died.
That rumor might have been spread by Linda over here. She is still angry because her youngest boy died last summer from lockjaw when he gashed his foot on a nail. That little cut shouldn’t have killed him. She cursed him.
Linda, who was Becky’s best friend, was caught up in the tale. She shook her head in denial.
Jason continued, his voice taking on the cadence of mounting hysteria.
“And the more you’d say it--the more you’d believe it because you’re scared to death and desperate for an explanation. So, you’d all gather one night with your pitchforks and torches and burn poor Becky here at the stake. Maybe that would be enough to stop God from extracting more vengeance on your remaining families.”
The room was utterly still. The kids were staring at Becky, then at each other, processing the psychology Jason was describing.
“And listen up, everyone,” Jason said, his voice suddenly sharp. “If you think we’re too smart for that nowadays, think about all the dumb stuff you heard on TV about Covid cures. Not only that, think about all the shaming and flaming that goes on anonymously on social media. If you’re ever tempted to join an online mob, to participate in cancel culture, to pile on someone who’s been accused of something—you’re behaving exactly like one of those medieval peasants in that mob did, burning poor Becky here at the stake.”
Jessica made a note. This was exactly the kind of critical thinking connection she’d been hoping to see.
Sarah Chen raised her hand tentatively. “Mr. Stone, are you saying social media is like medieval witch hunts?”
“What do you think, Sarah? When someone gets flamed online and thousands of people attack them without knowing the facts, without due process, based on rumors. Plain meanness. Fat shaming and slut shaming? Sure seems like it to me.”
The parallels were clearly dawning on the students. Several looked uncomfortable.
“But Mr. Stone,” said David Peterson, “sometimes people really are guilty of what they’re accused of.”
“And sometimes Becky really was practicing witchcraft, according to medieval standards. The question is: does that justify mob justice? Does fear and uncertainty give somebody the right to destroy someone based on whether they like them or were just in a bad mood that day?”
Jason moved to the next part of his demonstration, placing his hand on Jeff Samuelson’s shoulder—one of the seated students.
“Let’s move on. Now, the next thing that happened was economic. With the reduced population, who was going to work the fields for Lord Jeff here? He’s used to a high standard of living. Thinks he deserves it. And you know Lord Jeff. He gets cranky when he doesn’t get his way.”
That released the tension in the room. Everyone laughed, including Jeff, but Jason’s expression remained serious.
“Jeff here used to live high on the hog. He ruled over all these folks,” he gestured to the standing ‘plague victims,’ “and paid them a pittance because they had no choice. They were subsistence farmers. That means that after paying Lord Jeff, they had just enough to live on. Subsistence labor was cheap because there were plenty of serfs.”
He looked around at the remaining seated students. “But now half the workforce is dead. Lord Jeff still needs his fields harvested, his manor maintained, his taxes paid. What happens to the surviving workers’ bargaining power?”
“Miss Santos. Lord Jeff needs workers. What do you demand?”
Maria thought about it. “Higher wages? Better treatment?”
“And if Lord Jeff refuses?”
“We leave and go work for another lord in the next county.”
“Bingo! For the first time in centuries, common people have economic leverage. The plague that killed half the population also broke the feudal system’s economic stranglehold on people.”
Jason wrote DEMOGRAPHIC COLLAPSE = ECONOMIC REVOLUTION on the board.
“This is what I mean when I say this shit is interesting.” Principal Hart winced at the language but noted how it captured student attention. “History isn’t just dates and battles. It’s human psychology under extreme pressure. It’s economic systems collapsing and rebuilding. It’s social dynamics that repeat across centuries.”
Ashley raised her hand. “So the plague actually helped the survivors in some ways?”
“Economically, yes. But at what cost? Miss Martinez, would you trade half your family for better wages?”
“No, of course not.”
“Right. This is the complexity of historical analysis. Events can have multiple effects—some terrible, some beneficial—and we have to understand all of them to understand the full impact.”
Jason turned to address the entire class. “The Black Death killed one-third of Europe’s population. It also ended serfdom, ended the Hundred Years’ War, sparked the Renaissance, contributed to the Protestant Reformation, and fundamentally changed European society. You can’t understand any of those later developments without understanding how that demographic collapse reshaped everything.”
Tom Williams raised his hand. “Mr. Stone, how does this connect to today? Are there modern parallels?”
“Excellent question, Tom. Anyone want to take a shot at that?”
Jenny Kim spoke up. “Immigration? Like, when population changes in an area, it affects wages and social dynamics?”
“Good connection. What else?”
David added, “Pandemics? We just lived through COVID. Did that change economic patterns?”
“How do you think it changed them?”
Several students spoke at once: “Remote work became normal,” “Some businesses closed permanently,” “People changed what jobs they wanted,” “Supply chains got disrupted.”
“All correct. Major demographic or health crises always reshape economic and social systems. The patterns repeat, just with different technology and different time scales. We probably won’t fully know the results for another fifty years. Historic effects take a while to play out.”
“Here’s the thing, if you guys know the patterns of history, you can protect yourself and your family against their effects.”
Jason looked at the clock. “For the students who ‘died’ today, you can sit back down. I have practiced witchcraft; you are cured. Your plague experience is over.”
As the fourteen students laughingly returned to their seats, Jason made his final point.
“Here’s what I want you to understand: every major historical change started with individual people making choices under pressure. The witch hunts, the war ending, the labor negotiations, the social upheaval—all of it happened because real people had to decide how to respond to unprecedented circumstances.”
He wrote INDIVIDUAL CHOICES = HISTORICAL CHANGE on the board.
“When you study history, you’re not just learning what happened. You’re learning how humans respond to crises, how societies adapt to change, how individual decisions aggregate into historical movements. That knowledge will help you understand the changes happening in our own time.”
The bell rang, but students lingered, still processing the demonstration.
“Hey Becky,” Jason smiled, “sorry for making you the witch.”
Becky grinned. “It’s okay, Mr. Stone. But it was kind of scary how easy it was to imagine everyone turning against me.”
“That’s exactly the point, Becky. Understanding that capacity in yourself and others is the beginning of wisdom.”
As students filed out, Jessica approached Jason’s desk.
“That was remarkable,” she said. “I’ve never seen students that engaged with medieval history. The connections you made between plague psychology and social media behavior—that’s sophisticated critical thinking.”
“The patterns repeat, Mrs. Hart. Different technology, same human nature. If students can recognize those patterns, they’re better equipped to navigate their own historical moment.”
“The language though—’this shit is interesting’—you might want to tone that down.”
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