Politics
1. What is Obamacare, its purpose, and why it's so controversial?
2. What are some reasons given for why the US political system may be failing?
3. Why could America default on its debt and what could be some of the results if it did?
4. Explain what gerrymandering is and its consequences.
5. Can you compare the US to any historical empires?
6. Who do politicians seem to be acting for?
7. How does a system with under 10% survive?
Personal Relations
1. Has sexting replaced old-fashioned love letters?
2. How have relationships between teens changed in the age of the Internet?
3. Why do people cheat on their partners?
4. What are the stereotypes surrounding cheating women?
5. Do you believe childhood influences one's older life? How?
6. Discuss any different types of parent-child relationships you know.
7. What stereotypes of parent-child relationships do you know?
Lifestyle
1. What different kinds of lifestyle do you know?
2. What factors determine our life choices?
3. Do you believe that your generation is more stressed than previous ones?
4. Why has it been said that sitting is the smoking of our generation?
5. Has technology made it more difficult to make a break from the past? If so, how?
6. What are the elements of a healthy lifestyle?
7. Does one's wealth influence their relationships?
Travel and Tourism
1. What is Dark Tourism?
2. What are the motivations and reasons for visiting such places?
3. Would you ever choose to take such a trip? If so, which would you choose and why?
4. Do you think it's educational for children to visit Dark Tourism locations?
5. Discuss the pros and cons of space tourism.
6. Discuss the pros and cons of the commercialization of space.
7. Will space tourism ever become more available to average people and if so, when?
8. Would you like to travel to space?
Technology
1. What technologies have been featured in movies that then later became part of our lives?
2. How have social networking sites influenced your life?
3. To what extent has technology influenced your life?
4. What consequences may wearable technology have on our lives?
5. What kind of technologies are predicted to become or you'd like to see become a part of our lives?
6. What is trolling and the disinhibition effect?
7. How is our online behavior influenced by our perception of anonymity?
Media
1. What is disaster porn and what is the attraction?
2. Should women be better represented in the media? Why/Why not?
3. Is the media in need of affirmative action programs and should they be instituted?
4. What is the backfire effect? Can you provide an example?
5. Is there censorship in the media? If so describe how it works, if not explain what happened to Phil Donahue.
6. What are the negative consequences of concentration of media ownership?
7. How do you think the media influences young people's lives and opinions?
Ethics
1. What are some of the potential causes of sociopathy?
2. Is it easy to recognize a sociopath?
3. How does a sociopath function in society?
4. What does it mean to be a whistleblower?
5. Is torture ever justifiable?
6. Why do people disagree about whether or not whistleblowers are heroes?
7. Why would Edward Snowden seek refuge in Russia?
Education
1. What are some of the benefits of higher education for society?
2. What are the major reasons cited by first year American university students for attending college?
3. What are the advantages and disadvantages of standardized testing?
4. Should religious education be obligatory in school?
5. Who should decide what goes into school curricula and textbooks?
6. Should creationism be taught instead of Darwinism? Is there any room for compromise?
7. Is it necessary to test children after every grade? At what age is it reasonable to introduce it?
Art and Culture
1. On what basis should school art classes be assessed and why?
2. What are the possible consequences of removing art and music classes from school curricula?
3. How has technology influenced art?
4. What do you think of performance art? Can you give some examples?
5. What's art? How do you decide what is and isn't art?
6. What's the relation between the creation of a piece of art and the final outcome?
7. Can social protest be art or not?
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ReplyDeleteHi, I have some doubts about the politics questions:
ReplyDeleteQ8. "Is Tanner's theory of societal collapse relevant in any way today?" - Do you mean Joseph Tainter's theory?
And how can we possibly answer question #7, may I ask for some suggestions? :)
Hey, we can probably get rid of question 8 as I did with the other class. For question #7, I'd start with this bit from the 2nd politics article:
ReplyDelete“The American citizen thus lives in a world where fantasy is more real than reality, where the image has more dignity than the original,” Daniel J. Boorstin wrote in his book “The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America.” “We hardly dare face our bewilderment, because our ambiguous experience is so pleasantly iridescent, and the solace of belief in contrived reality is so thoroughly real. We have become eager accessories in the great hoaxes of the age. These are the hoaxes we play on ourselves.”
Culture and literacy, in the final stage of decline, are replaced with noisy diversions and empty clichés. The Roman statesman Cicero inveighed against their ancient equivalent—the arena. Cicero, for his honesty, was hunted down and murdered and his hands and head were cut off. His severed head and his right hand, which had written the Philippics, were nailed onto the speaker’s platform in the Forum. The roaring crowds, while the Roman elite spat on the head, were gleefully told he would never speak or write again. In the modern age this toxic, mindless cacophony, our own version of spectacle and gladiator fights, of bread and circus, is pumped into the airwaves in 24-hour cycles. Political life has fused into celebrity worship. Education is primarily vocational. Intellectuals are cast out and despised. Artists cannot make a living. Few people read books. Thought has been banished, especially at universities and colleges, where timid pedants and careerists churn out academic drivel. “Although tyranny, because it needs no consent, may successfully rule over foreign peoples,” Hannah Arendt wrote in “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” “it can stay in power only if it destroys first of all the national institutions of its own people.” And ours have been destroyed.
Sensual pleasure and eternal youth are our overriding obsessions. The Roman emperor Tiberius, at the end, fled to the island of Capri and turned his seaside palace into a house of unbridled lust and violence. “Bevies of girls and young men, whom he had collected from all over the Empire as adepts in unnatural practices, and known as spintriae, would copulate before him in groups of three, to excite his waning passions,” Suetonius wrote in “The Twelve Caesars.” Tiberius trained small boys, whom he called his minnows, to frolic with him in the water and perform oral sex. And after watching prolonged torture, he would have captives thrown into the sea from a cliff near his palace. Tiberius would be followed by Caligula and Nero.
Thank you! And yes, it would be great to get rid of question 8 :)
ReplyDelete