Class Assignments Jan. 27, 2011 — agenda
Dear Scholars,
The WiZiQ online recording of the class worked this week but was only available to those on my mailing list. If you have trouble accessing it on WiZiQ, you will also find it here.
The suggested comic sketch project seems to have been to daunting. Always remember that project assignments are always only suggestions. Write on a subject that inspires you! We will discuss ideas.
Assignments for this week
Please be sure to watch these. They are a bit long but watch as much as you can: Great composers: Johann Sebastian Bach. This is a superb documentary featuring some great speakers including Johnathan Miller and Karen Armstrong.
Discussions: A panel discussion has been added on changes in society and culture. Panelists from MIT, Cornell, Oxford and Cambridge debate issues. As always, the content is not the point, the language is.
The comic dialogue/monologue is not an easy assignment and has failed largely to inspire. Let’s keep it in mind but go on to other, perhaps more provocative projects.
The persuasive essay
Everyone needs to be persuasive at some point in life, whether it is in a job application, a complaint letter or simply an article in support of a palm tree in a parking lot.
Let’s discuss some perspectives and persuasive strategies that one might adopt in addressing some of the following:
- Academic expectations of college athletes
- Advertising in schools
- Anorexia – a cause of unhealthy weight loss
- Athletes as role models
- Adoption with secret identity of the mother should or shouldn’t go on
- Are parents of teen vandals be held responsible for their child’s damage
- Benefit of team sports
- Betting racket in sports
- Celebrity gossip and the paparazzi
- Commercialization of sports
- Commercials of liquor
- Cosmetic surgery – playing with the nature?
- Cyber stalkers
- Convicted sex offender should be publicized or not
- Death penalty or life sentence
- Domestic abuse and violence should be punished
- Effects of cell phones
- Effects of divorce on children
- Free public transport for everybody
- Funding issues for women’s sports
- Greenhouse effect – a result of deforesting
- Hip-hop music lyrics
- Human cloning – is it right?
- Illegal music downloading
- Images of women in the media
- Immigration rights
- Inheritance law and gay couples
- Internet – more harm than good or vice versa
- Internet pornography
- Internet privacy issues
- Mandatory moment of silence in school
- Media violence having a negative effect
- Public funding of community sports programs
- Pregnancy requires AIDS test
- Public radio/public television
- Pollution is a consistent demolition of the earth
- Should internet be censored?
- Salary caps for professional athletes
- School uniform – good tradition or outdated habit
- Sexual imagery in the media
- Should abortion be encouraged?
- Single parent families
- Sports and steroid use
- Sports and violence
- Secular and religious holiday decorations in schools
- School vouchers for religious schools
- Terrorism – how to stop it
- The age limit for drinking
- The phenomenon of reality television
- Use of internet by small children
- Unnecessary curfew for children under the age of fifteen
Assignments:
Consider the topics above and post suggested arguments or a complete paper. Should we engage in a debate, prepared or unprepared on any of these topics?
Listening:
Hamlet: a small rewrite. This is a very clever and extremely funny sketch by Atkinson and Laurie on a supposed discussion of Hamlet between Shakespeare and his producer. The scene itself is posted as well. Let’s watch it in class.
Robert Fisk lecture on aspects of journalism in the middle east and an opposing opinion on Iraq by Hitchens.
Please make your own suggestions.