On Tuesday/Wednesday (Lesson 4), we kick off our mini-project A Government for Xlandia. A memo from the United Nations lays out our task of recommending what kind of constitutional democracy would be best for the newly free people of Xlandia. We draft a problem statement and take an inventory of what we know and don’t know going into this project.
For Literature, we continue our exploration of the concept of world view by reading an excerpt from The Death of Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory (1485). What we don’t finish in class you must read independently outside of class.
You are given an assignment to watch parts of the Republican National Convention, which is broadcast from 5–8pm every night this week through Thursday. Take notes on the speech or speeches that you hear; then, in a two-paragraph write-up, present the following:
For Lesson 5 (Thursday/Friday), we debrief the Republican Convention as you submit the write-up of your notes on it. In a quickwrite, you express your opinion on human nature: Are human beings born fundamentally good, selfish, rational, or products of their environment? We then divide up into groups and design hypothetical governments based around these beliefs.
Our exploration of world view continues with a discussion of The Death of Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory and an introduction to the short story “The Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka.
Welcome to The Making of the Modern Mind, a course in critical thinking that combines upper division World Literature, Government, and Economics.
We start the first day of class with a fun activity descrambling some famous quotes that acquaint us with the staggering evolution of philosophical and artistic thought over the last 500 years, a quick intro to our year-long intellectual pursuit.
We spend some time looking over the syllabus and classroom expectations and policies.
Finally, by way of introducing the Government component of our course, we read and discuss an opinion essay by David Brooks about the political beliefs of youth, which sets up your first writing assignment for the year: Your Personal Political Philosophy, due at the end of the week.
For Lesson 2, on our short-rotation Wednesday, a quickwrite that asks you to identify which political party you affiliate with (or don’t affiliate with) prepares us for a class discussion on political belief and a brief introduction to the concept of political party.
On Thursday/Friday (Lesson 3), we do our first read-around of the year; each student shares with the class an excerpt from Writing Assignment #1: Your Personal Political Philosophy.
We take notes on the concept of world view: an underlying belief system that shapes how a person interprets the world and interacts with it. And we apply this concept to our understanding of two poems from different literary eras: “Thoughts on Capital Punishment” by Rod McKuen and “A Dialogue Between the Soul and Body” by Andrew Marvell.