1. Why is it that people need role models? What is it about those we admire that makes us admire them?

2. We could broadly say that positive role models encourage or inspire people to do positive things and negative role models as those who do the opposite? Why isn’t that enough for us to help define what a role models is? What characteristics to positive and negative role models share? How easy is it to see the positive aspects of someone we do not like or vice versa?

3. In what ways can a person have influence over someone else? How does that influence change as we grow older?

4. What responsibilities does a role model have, if any, and why or why not?

5. What happens when we cannot reach the level of success that our role models have had? How do we get from wanting to be like someone is stature, ability, and material success to wanting to demonstrate the same values, work ethic, and power?

6. If your role model is someone who is not famous, how does one go beyond what they have achieved? If a role model is famous, how much do we know about that person, and how much is presumed or mythized?

7. If someone tells you that you are a role model, how do you respond?

1. Who are the heros found in our history books? From legends and stories told in our families? What makes these people heroic or important to our culture?

2. Before telling about Toussaint L’Ouverture, what heros do these boys have or talk about?

3. What is there to the discussion on pp. 472ff. about Africans being lazy?

4. What is important about the way Buster tells Riley the story of "Toussan"?

5. Why wasn’t Toussaint L’Ouverture’s story in the history books the children read?

Alice Walker, "Everyday Use" (272) -- see In class writing #5

1. What famous Black American do you know about outside of entertainment and sports? {Try to think of modern examples.}

2. Why does he believe "black spend too much time on the playing fields and too little time in the libraries" (47)? What is the cause of this?

3. What does Ashe tell high school students? What does he want to see pro athlete tell them?

[4. How hard it is for any person of color to think he/she can be whatever he/she wants to be if all he never sees people of his race in positions other than sports or entertainment?]

5. How can parents, particularly in places where the number of role models of a group seems (but may not be) small, encourage children work hard and achieve their potential?

6. What can any athletes to be good role models? Is Arthur Ashe’s own life a testament that there is more to life than athletics?

What makes Bill Gates an important figure in our present culture? How do you think he will be remembered in history?

How is Bill Gates like John D. Rockefeller?

One of the people quoted in the article states, "It's like Bille Gates lives with us" (410). Is there, not only from the people he works with and his competition, that there is an "enveloping sense of Bill Gates" (410), that he's everywhere?

What does Seabrook mention that Gates and Microsoft are trying to develop? What impact would a machine like this have on our culture and our world?

Look at the paragraph on page 412 discussing e-mail. What does this tell us about Gates and the way he runs his company?

What is the atmosphere at Microsoft?

Since, as Seabrook writes, Gates "doesn't have the physical charisma of Steve Jobs" (413), how does he lead?

What are we to make of the fact that Gates is "confrontational" (414)? What is one to do when confronted like this?

What should we make of the final paragraph? What does this tell us about Gates?

How much influence does Bill Gates have in our lives, whether we like it or not? Why might someone want to be like him? Why not?

1. [Show or discuss the opening of Garp. How often does this happen, a woman wanting a child but not a husband? What would cause a woman to choose to be a single parent? Why would a man abdicate responsibility?]

2. What is Popenoe=s thesis?

3. Popenoe states, AFatherhood is said by many to be merely a social role that others. . .can play@. Where would he get that idea?

4. What is the difference between Afatherless@ children of today and those of previous generations?

5. Popenoe writes that Adivorce need not mean disconnection. In reality, it often does.@ Why? Though divorce occurs more and more often, we have very few Mrs. Doubtfire situations. Why?

6. How does Popenoe handle the objection that it might be better for children to be raised by one parent than in a dysfunctional family? {Rare that there a family is so dysfunctional as to be worse than a single parent.}

7. What social problems does he link to fatherlessness? Note he does not say fatherlessness definitely is the only cause for all these things. What other things does he concede could be some of the causes of these problems?

8. What do fathers do for children, according to Popenoe?

9. What role does play have in the development of children, particularly between fathers and their children?

10. Popenoe discusses some surprising effects that fathers have on their children. What are they?

11. How do men suffer from the effects of fatherlessness?

12. Is there a difference between the truly absent father and the father who is home but rarely "there"?