~ Thomas Jefferson, 1824
Learning Targets -
- We can identify some of our fundamental political beliefs
- We can explain the controversies created by federalism
The starter for today is to use this worksheet to decide whether the U.S. government operates more by a majority rule or by consensus model of democracy. It's not an easy question. I'll show this graphic that shows a comparison of the U.S. to 35 other democracies around the world. We are majority in some ways, but consensus-based in others. One of the main ways that we're consensus based is in our system of Federalism, which was the subject of the video you watched over the weekend.
That's today's focus. We'll talk federalism today and do seminar prep.
Tomorrow we'll do a seminar and you'll dip your toe in the river issue as we start our research figuring what happened, what it means, and what we should do.
The rest of the week will going deeper and deeper into the river issue and seeing different ways to look at the problem. We have to agree on a definition of the problem before we can decide what we want to do. Just as an example, is the problem that
· Mining companies don't want to pay to clean up their mess, or
· EPA won't let locals deal with the river, or
· Modern society as a whole demands the metals we get from mining and we don't want to pay for the clean-up
We'll move from this overview of the week to discuss the video and answer the rest of the questions on the handout I sent home with you on Friday. I'll also explain how federalism relates to the "power to the people" forced choice we did on Friday. Look at this graphic. Where are today's Democrats? Where are today's Republicans? Where is the Tea Party movement? Where is Occupy Wall Street? Where are you? This is a good framework for thinking about the ideological divides in American politics.
This discussion should take us to break.
After break, you'll divide into groups and use this handout to go deeper with seminar prep and your thinking about federalism. As a group you'll discuss and take notes and then use these notes to post an entry on your DP summarizing your thoughts on federalism. You can then compare this to your seminar reflection.
If there's time, we'll do a slide show of the images you created over the weekend. I'll put these together into a mural we'll get up in the hallway.
Homework due Tuesday, September 22nd
None