ACTIVITY WHAT IS A
JUST SOCIETY?
1. The 5 panels described below include thinkers from world history. Each student should select one of these thinkers to research and role play during a panel discussion,
2. Each student should research the following things about his or her thinker: where and when the person lived; the key parts of the persons life; the main ideas that the person held.
3. Each student, in the role of his or her character should prepare a response to this question: What is a just society?
4. The panels in turn, will present their discussions in front of the rest of the class:
a. Each panel member, speaking in character introduces who he or she is.
b. Each panel member explains his or her vision of a just society
c. The panel members ask each other questions and debate what a just society is. Members of the rest of the class may also ask questions.
5. After all panels have presented their discussions, each student should write his or her own personal response to the question: What is a just society?
THE PANELS
1. RELIGIOUS
LEADERS: MOSES,
2. REVOLUTIONARIES AND REFORMERS: Thomas Paine, Maximilien Robespierre, Vladimir Lenin, Mohandas Gandhi, Jane Addams, Martin Luther King
3. POLITICAL VISIONARIES: Machiavelli, Voltaire, Thomas Hobbes,
Thomas Jefferson, Jeremy Bentham, Susan B. Anthony
4. CAPITALISTS AND THEIR CRITICS: Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus,
John D. Rockefeller, Sir Robert Owen, Eugene V. Debs, Emma Goldman
5. CRITICAL THINKERS: Socrates, Frederick Douglass, Mark Twain,
Chief Joseph, John Dewey, Rachel Carson
DIRECTIONS
- Sign up in room 207 (beginning 11/19/03)
- PERIOD 1 CHOOSE FROM PANELS 1- 2- 3
- PERIOD 3 CHOOSE FROM PANELS 1- 3 - 4- 5
- PERIOD 7 CHOOSE FROM PANELS 2 3 4 - 5
- PANELS
WILL BE RANDOMLY SELECTED TO BEGIN REPORTING ON