Activity Four

This activity is to accompany Unit One of the Curriculum Guide.

Incorporating the C.E.L.s:

• Independent Learning
• Critical & Creative Thinking
• Personal & Social Values and Skills

Concept Application Lesson for:

• Decision Making
• Equality
• Hierarchy
• Authoritarianism
• Politics

This concept application activity gives students an opportunity to analyze the style of decision making used in specific historical situations. It also allows students to prepare arguments for a particular style of decision making, with the goal of gaining the support of the parties affected by the decision.

Knowledge Objectives

The student will:

• know that the style of decision making influences the perception of the decision being just or unjust;
• know that injustices are sometimes rationalized and perpetuated;
• know that rights of the minority are not always protected in society;
• know that both violent and non-violent methods have been used by individuals/groups to secure their perceived rights; and,
• know that propaganda has been used to gain public support for particular positions or causes.

Skills Development

The student will:

• practice constructing a classification system that can be used to summarize and order data for presentation, discussion and analysis;
• learn to apply concepts to historical events as a method of categorizing and classifying information; and
• practice making hypotheses based on reasonable assumptions and inferences.

Values Issues

The student will:

• discuss whether the style of decision making influences whether the decision appears to be just or unjust;
• discuss whether tradition and traditional beliefs makes it difficult to achieve equality for all members of a society;
• discuss whether it is possible to secure the rights of the minority within a society;
• discuss the methods a minority could use to ensure that their rights are respected within the larger society; and,
• discuss whether violence is acceptable when it is used to achieve social justice.

Outline of the Activity

Step One:

Have student groups investigate one of the following historical situations:

• events in Paris in 1871;
• the Dreyfus Affair;
• the Irish Question; and,
• the situation within the Austrian Empire.

The tasks of each group are to:

• indicate the major parties involved in the historical situation;
• indicate the paradigm (Theory X or Y) underlying the major decision-making process used in the historical situation;
• indicate the impact that the style of decision making had on the parties involved and on the perception of justice or injustice; and,
• decide whether a change in the decision- making process would have had a significant effect on the historical situation and the parties involved.

Groups are to present to the class their conclusions concerning the effect of the decision-making style on the particular parties in the historical situation.

Evaluation:

Each group is to prepare a short report indicating:

• the decision-making paradigm that leads to the most satisfactory decisions for the people involved; and,
• the rationale for their choice of decision-making paradigms.