Unit Overview
This sample unit invites students to explore the issue of equality related to the sub-themes of inequalities, judging others, rights and responsibilities, racial tensions, and justice and fairness.
Using a range of prose, poetry, and a play, it asks students to explore equality through the eyes of teens attempting to obtain drivers' licences and the issues surrounding rights and responsibilities when driving. The unit then explores the larger issues of rights and responsibilities, judging others, and racial tensions in the world community. Students are encouraged to respond personally and to analyze critically the ideas and issues that face our society. They explore fact and opinion, symbolism, stereotyping, propaganda, and bias in language, literature, and the media. They have opportunities to craft their ideas and responses in paragraphs and essays, to analyze their own listening behaviours, and to practise formal and informal speech activities.
As students explore issues beyond their immediate community, there is a tendency for them to interpret other parts of the world based on limited information or on what they see through the media. This information can result in unwarranted generalizations about others and their cultures or, because the media reports often deal with the horrors of life, to focus on the negative aspects. An issue-based course must guard against both the over simplification and the negative. A balanced perspective is important.
In the English language arts curriculum, language provides the foundation for all learning including the study of literature and other forms of communication. While both English Language Arts A10 and B10 courses integrate the language strands of speaking, listening, writing, reading, representing, and viewing, this course is also issue-oriented. In an issue-oriented course, students explore their beliefs, assumptions, and thoughts as they examine issues related to their world.
This unit is not a political science or social science unit. It does, however, offer links to some of the issues and concepts students may have explored in the sciences and social sciences (e.g., drinking and driving, stereotyping, rights and responsibilities, and power and wealth). Students should be encouraged to draw upon learning from other areas.
Students are encouraged to use language purposefully and effectively as they process information, make decisions, solve problems, and think creatively and critically. As they examine issues, they develop competence in understanding and using formal and informal language conventions.
We want to be judged by who we are--our words and actions--not by mere appearances or social standing. Yet our world is filled with inequalities. In this unit, students examine the issues of equality and rights recognizing that, in our society, we need to balance personal needs with responsibilities and demands required of citizens. There is both pain and pride in being human.
Suggested Time for Unit: Ten weeks. This is a suggested time only. Teachers may need to adjust the length of the unit based on the needs, interests, and learning pace of their students.