History 20 - Activity Guide - Student Worksheet: Critical Attributes of Democratic and Totalitarian Societies

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This information is to accompany Activity Four of the Unit Two Curriculum Guide.

For printing and copying these templates Require Acrobat Reader

Student Worksheet: Critical Attributes of Democratic and Totalitarian Societies

Areas for Consideration	Critical Attributes of a Democratic Society	Critical Attributes of a Totalitarian Society
Rule by law
Equality before the law
Rule by the majority
Freedoms of: •speech •religion
Rights to: •habeas corpus •privacy •movement
Other

Have the students brainstorm and discuss their list of critical attributes for democracy and totalitarianism.

Have the students create two more columns:

Implications
(What do these critical attributes suggest for the way society is run?)

Consequences
(What changes will these critical attributes make in the operation of society?)

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This information is to accompany Activity Four of the Unit Four Activity Guide.

For printing and copying these templates Require Acrobat Reader

Student Worksheet: Comparison\Contrast of Democracy and Totalitarianism

Freedom	Democracy	Totalitarianism
of speech?
of assembly?
of religion?
of education and work?
etc.

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

Student Information Sheet: Conservative Authoritarian and Democratic Paradigms

Groups of individuals within societies, at differing times, are able to influence the prevailing philosophy a society will adopt towards human rights.

Some societies have adopted a democratic philosophy while others are attracted to authoritarian philosophies.

The Paradigm of Conservative Authoritarianism

Major tenets of this paradigm include:

the belief that an elite, born and educated to lead society's social institutions, must refuse to share power with ordinary people through democratic processes;
distrust of social change as being something that would invariably lead to social upheaval and dislocation of the culture;
the believe that it is necessary to establish a loyal and obedient bureaucracy, police force and military and give them the power to maintain order.

Conservative Authoritarian Moral Vision

Conservative authoritarians are not interested in having total control over the lives of citizens.

They are primarily interested in maintaining enough support so that the system can survive.

Authoritarian governments view nationalism and the protection of the national heritage as being of significant moral value.

The traditional institutions of society, the church, the monarchy, the military, and the universities, are critical to preserving a society's national heritage.

The Democratic Paradigm and Moral Vision

By the end of the nineteenth century, significant numbers of the middle class and urban workers, had decided to develop a new society based on progress and the principles of liberalism or social democracy. They believed that:

society must be socially mobile so that people of talent are allowed to contribute to society both economically and politically; and,
a society based on rationality, harmony and peaceful progress would allow for the most civilized and progressive social order.

The beliefs associated with this democratic moral vision were:

Democracy means that the well-being of the individual is sacred and that the individual must always be considered an end and never a means.
The sanctity of the individual means that it is immoral for any social policy to be used to exploit an individual for the benefit of the group in a way that infringes on the individual's basic dignity.
The power of the state must always be controlled and limited so that it serves the needs of the individual.