Dr Tom Kerns
North Seattle Community College

 

Assignment for week eight

This week will be a major challenge, unfortunately, because there's a lot to do in a very short time. The main reading and writing assignments will need to be started ASAP so they can be completed by Saturday (Sunday at the latest). They need to be completed by then so that the "Final Exam" can take place on Sunday and Monday (and then your SEs -- both Final SE and Project SE -- need to be turned in on Monday).

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 two days 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 Monday.

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 few or as many of the additional related articles on that page as you would like (count the others as "extra reading" on 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 Saturday (Sunday at the latest).

There will also be a "Final Exam." You'll be posting and responding to the questions for that Final Exam on Sunday and Monday. Click here for details about that Final Exam.

Two Self Evaluations are due on Monday (at the latest), the project SE and the Final SE which will cover your work for the whole quarter. The Final SE cannot be turned in before Monday (because the entire quarter, including the last few days, needs to be included on it) and not after Monday (because NSCC's schedule requires me to turn in grades first thing the very next morning).

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 very tight week, so you'll want to get started soon on this.