Forum: Background Assumptions and Bias

Think about your sub-topic for your term paper. Then spend AT LEAST 10 full minutes brainstorming about what background assumptions, knowledge, principles, preferences, and ideas might influence the way you perceive arguments about your sub-topic.

Post your answers in comments. Don't forget to include an explanation of your sub-topic.

Photo of Rodin's Le Penseur (c) 2005 by Piero d under Creative Commons Attribution license
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rodin_le_penseur.JPG

Forum Assignment: Argument Maps

Work on your argument map for a few hours. After you've worked for some time, think about what major question or questions you're running into. It can be a question about your argument itself (you suddenly realized you didn't understand part of your argument until you tried to put it down systematically); how the program works; how to arrange claims (how the claims fit together to form an argument); whatever questions you've run into, and you can't figure out for yourself after puzzling over it for a while. Put your questions below in comments.

Forum 2: Breaking Questions Down

Update:

Don't forget to include your name, unless your screen name includes your first and last name. Otherwise I can't credit you for doing the assignment!

If you forgot to include your name, write a second post, saying what time you posted, what your screen name was, and what your actual name is (you can use just a last initial if you prefer).

Background
In our fictional story, Corinne has claimed that Cromwell's Discriminatory Harassment Policy violates her rights to freedom of expression under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

We looked at the first amendment, and looked at an overview of how the first amendment has been interpreted. We found that the court generally tries to balance the interest an individual has in the expression at issue, versus the interest the state (in this case, the state is represented by the school) has in limiting that expression.

We then generated two further, central questions:
1. What is the interest an individual has in free expression? What's good about letting people express their beliefs, even if those beliefs are offensive?
2. What interest does the school have in limiting the expression of offensive or hostile beliefs?

Assignment
Using those two questions as a springboard, generate at least two more questions that you'd want to have answers to, before you could answer the general question about whether the school's policy is unconstitutional or not.

Remember that a good way to generate questions is to throw ideas around, and then turn claims into questions. You can also do some research to help generate further questions. We're getting into a level of depth, now, that will make this assignment challenging, but you can do it!

Post your answers in comment, below.

Answers are due no later than 4 a.m. on Monday, September 6. Ideally, they'll be posted by 6 p.m. on Saturday, September 4.

Confederate flag images (c) William Quigley under Creative Commons attribution/share alike

Forum 1: Research

We're currently trying to evaluate the claim that it is/is not reasonably foreseeable that the Confederate Battle Flag would create a hostile atmosphere. As part of that, we were researching the ways in which the flag has been used - which groups used it and when, what it symbolized at the time, and how it was interpreted through its history.

All of you wrote about the history of the flag's design during the Civil War in the U.S., and its use by the then Confederate States of America during that war. A few of you mentioned in passing that the flag was used since then by various hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan and other White Supremacist groups.

The flag's use has a much longer history, though, as it came to be employed again in the 1940s as a symbol of opposition to integration and civil rights. One student included that history in the assignment, and I would argue that that information contributes significantly to our development of the question at issue.

For your forum assignment, answer BOTH questions below. You should write at least one substantial paragraph for each question.

1. How does your thinking develop about the meaning of the Confederate Battle flag as a symbol, as you gain further information about its history and use?

2. What specific steps can you take next time to improve your research, so that you're more likely to learn important facts about the issue at hand? (if you included substantial history about the use of the flag in the early 20th century, please write about what steps you took that helped you find this information.)