Dr Tom Kerns
North Seattle Community College

 

 

Assignment for week ten

 

This week will be a bit of a challenge, unfortunately, because there's a lot to do in a short time. The main reading and writing assignments will need to be started ASAP so they can be completed by Sunday. They need to be completed by then so that the "Final Exam" can take place on Monday through Wednesday (and then your SEs on Wednesday).So during the first few days of the week we continue with issues related to environmentally induced illness and to public health ethics in general. In the last half of the week there will be a final exam (to be described later), and then your Self Evaluations -- project SE and Final SE -- will be due Wednesday night.

Here's the assignment:

The reading assignment for this week is to read:

• Enemy of the People, by Henrik Ibsen (adapted by Arthur Miller)

• "Fear in the Fields," the Seattle Times series by Duff Wilson

  The assignment is to read at least the first "Fear in the Fields" article listed on the Online Texts page; you can then read as many of the additional articles on that page as you would like (count the others as "extra reading" when completing your Final SE)

The writing assignment for "Fear in the Fields" is this:

There are no SQs or DQs for the "Fear in the Fields" articles; instead the assignment is to discuss the elements of that story that you consider especially important or noteworthy.

The writing assignment for the Ibsen/Miller play is twofold:

a. In this play some of the characters deal with the moral question of the town's responsibility for polluting the waters in a teleological manner and others in a deontological manner. Choose one character from each side and explain how they exemplify their moral approach.

b. Provide a title for each scene in the play (two scenes in act one, two in act two and one in act three)

These assignments, both the reading and writing parts, will need to be completed by Sunday night.

Information about the "Final Exam" will be posted on Saturday. You will be posting and responding to those exam questions from Sunday evening through Wednesday. Details to come soon.

Two Self Evaluations are due on Wednesday, the Project SE and the Final SE. The Project SE can be turned in any time between now and Wednesday night. The Final SE for the whole quarter needs to be turned in on Wednesday. It cannot be turned in before Wednesday (because the entire quarter, including the last few days, needs to be included on it) and not after Wednesday (because I'll be turning in grades within a day or so after that).

In addition to these formally assigned postings, of course, there can also be the more informal postings about any other ideas or questions or arguments that strike you in these readings.

The postings for this week will all be posted into the Classroom Discussion folder.

Again, it is not necessary that you complete the entire reading assignment before posting your first message. Discussions should probably be ongoing during the time you are reading the play and newspaper article(s). In any case, you should start posting discussion messages, whether as part of this formal assignment or just as informal reactions to what you are reading, by Friday. This will be a tight week, so you'll want to get started soon on this.