Using Danielle Allen's Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality as a guide, the government class conducted a slow and thorough reading of the DOI last week. As a class we deconstructed and contextualized the words and meanings in the text: impel, "One People", dowery, etc. After several days of discussion, students were tasked with writing a two part essay.
Part 1 was to evaluate and summarize the DOI
PART 2 was to critique what our society would look like if we took the words, meanings, and ideas in the Declaration seriously.
On Thursday we watched some clips and discussed the vote for Scottish Independence, another country with a population that considered disassociating with the United Kingdom. Assuming that only 1/3 of American colonists supported the movement for independence perhaps we should be grateful that after declaring independence we didn't have a vote or our world would be very different.
This week we will be watching the film Street Fight about a mayoral election in Newark, NJ. It will be awesome so don't miss class.
Open House Thursday night (9/25) at 6pm. I hope to see you there.
Part 1 was to evaluate and summarize the DOI
PART 2 was to critique what our society would look like if we took the words, meanings, and ideas in the Declaration seriously.
On Thursday we watched some clips and discussed the vote for Scottish Independence, another country with a population that considered disassociating with the United Kingdom. Assuming that only 1/3 of American colonists supported the movement for independence perhaps we should be grateful that after declaring independence we didn't have a vote or our world would be very different.
This week we will be watching the film Street Fight about a mayoral election in Newark, NJ. It will be awesome so don't miss class.
Open House Thursday night (9/25) at 6pm. I hope to see you there.