Activity Three

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

Incorporating the C.E.L.s:

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

Concept Application Lesson for:

• Decision Making
• Totalitarianism
• Democracy
• Rights
• Accountability

This concept application activity permits students to identify the critical attributes of totalitarian and democratic forms of government. The activity allows students to develop criteria to determine the allocation of individual and collective rights.

Knowledge Objectives

The student will:

• know that within each society, there exists an interplay between individual needs and rights and collective needs and rights;
• know that totalitarian regimes place restrictions on the rights of individual citizens and the involvement of individual citizens in national decision making;
• know that in totalitarian states, public participation/influence in the national decision- making process is limited;
• know that within democracies, restrictions on the actions of individual citizens exist;
• know that within democracies, the elected leadership is held accountable for its decisions through such mechanisms as regular and free elections; and,
• know that within democracies, the general public can influence decision-making processes.

Skills Development

The student will:

• practise the analyzing similarities and differences between paradigms;
• practise using the critical attributes of concepts and values as criteria to make decisions and evaluations;
• practise using the following analytical skills:
  • defining the main parts,
  • defining cause and effect relationships, and
  • defining how the parts of the whole are related to each other; and,
• practise applying criteria about the ideals of justice to actual situations.

Values Issues

The student will:

• discuss the impact on the individual of being a citizen of a totalitarian state;
• discuss the "rights" that distinguish a democracy from a totalitarian form of government;
• discuss whether the rights of the individual should supersede the collective rights of the state; and,
• discuss whether the collective rights of the state should supersede the rights of the individual.

Outline of the Activity

Ask the students to identify the activities that should be regulated by government and the activities that should not be regulated by government. Attempt to identify criteria that would determine the activities that should be regulated.

Issues that could be considered include:

• Does the activity represents a physical danger to the participants or other citizens?
• Does the activity represent a significant danger to the existence or well-being of the society?
• Does the activity represents a challenge to the community's moral/social code?
• Does government intervention represent a limitation on the "rights" of the individual?
• What are the "rights" of a citizen in a democracy?

Have the students, working in groups, prepare a "Bill of Rights" which identifies the rights that each citizen of the society possesses.
Each group is to:

• prepare criteria that indicates when government intervention or regulation would be justified;
• indicate situations in which the "rights" of the citizens would have to limited;
• indicate whether all citizens within the society are entitled to equal rights; and,
• indicate whether the "list" of rights will be affected by technological, environmental or other developments.

Groups will present their "Bill of Rights" and their criteria to the class.

• The class could discuss the various "Bills" and debate the presence or absence of specific rights.