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.
Posted by Justin Wells : 08/25/2008