Role of Civic Engagement in a Republic
Learning Objective: Social Psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s “Three Great Untruths” are examined: 1) life is a battle between good people and evil people, 2) what doesn’t kill you makes you weaker, and 3) always trust your feelings. Civic engagement is the antidote to the divisiveness and self-centeredness that belief in these “untruths” fosters.
Please note: Additional requirements for the Primary Assignment can be found in the Course Assignment Comments (below).
Political Speech and Civic Engagement (aka Deeply Flawed Article)
In June 2019, the Gallup polling organization reported that 23% of Americans viewed immigration as the most important political issue facing the United States. Although we frequently hear American society described as a nation of immigrants, concerns over immigration is not a new topic. In 1896 Senator Henry Cabot Lodge delivered a speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate, titled, The Restriction of Immigration. For this assignment, write a paper of no less than 600 words analyzing and critiquing three arguments presented by Senator Lodge. In your role as an engaged citizen, how would you respond to the views expressed by Lodge? Use specific ideas from the assigned readings in weeks one and two to support your argument.
Course Assignment Comments
As a part of the Primary Assignment grading rubric, a student’s adherence to The 2+1 Rule, including the appropriate use and citation of the assigned readings, is considered in the final grade for the assignment.
Students want to use the main idea or theme AND cite, two assigned reading articles from the current week and also any (one or more ) assigned reading article(s) from a previous week in their Primary Assignment.
Students want to not “cherry-pick” a quote from an assigned reading, or use the author’s words out of context. Cherry picking is not a valid demonstration of learning.
Rather, the student wants to demonstrate learning from the assigned reading articles by identifying and using the main idea or theme of the assigned reading articles in their essay. Your instructor cannot grade your opinion. What we can grade is how you use the assigned reading articles to respond to the Primary Assignment question. The Primary Assignment prompt is merely a mechanism for students to use to demonstrate what they learned after having read the assigned reading articles.
Each Primary Assignment requires:
a thesis statement,
an APA style bibliography,
use of APA style in-line citations, and
adherence to the 2+1 Rule.
