Thursday, September 1st

Today's Driving Questions

• What is the difference between a just and unjust law?
• What is  the individual’s role in creating a just society?
• What is Civil Disobedience?

Starter:  Quiz on Dr. King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail"

AGENDA
1. Review quiz answers

2. Ashley's PPT introduction of The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail

3.  "Obama's War Rhetoric Throughout his Presidency"

• What do you notice about the evolution of his rhetoric? Any explanations for the changes?
• Any evidence of "manifest destiny" ideology in his rhetoric?
• What IDEALS or VALUES seem to underpin his argumentation? Does it change at all throughout the video?

4.  Mexican-American War primary source articles
Read the two primary source documents on the Mexican-American War and complete the Historical Thinking Skills chart.   I'd recommend annotating these articles as well as you will use these in our final seminar on TNTSJ. You will have the rest of class today and depending on how much time you all need, up to 1st hour of class tomorrow. 

• Primary Source #1: John O'Sullivan on Manifest Destiny (don't worry yet about the questions at the end, we'll do that in class on Thursday)
• Primary Source #2: North Star Editorial, "The War with Mexico"
• Historical Thinking Skills Chart

**A few notes about strategies to best comprehending these readings:

• Look at the date of publication of both articles. At what point in the war was each written? What does the title and intro information for each source suggest about the perspective and tone of the article?
• Read it outloud!  Seriously!
• Look up words you don't understand. Write the definition in the margin.
• Pay attention to what VALUES/IDEALS the two authors seem to emphasize: Security, Liberty, Equality or something else?

HONORS HOMEWORK DUE TUESDAY, 9/6
Read Chapter 1 of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States: "Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress"Answer the following questions in your digital comp books.
1.  How does Zinn challenge your previous notions about the “discovery” of America by Christopher Columbus?  How does this version complicate the dominant ideological tradition of Columbus as our forefather?
2.  What is Zinn’s perspective about the writing of history?
3.  Zinn argues that most history texts pretend that there is such a thing as “The United States”—a community of people with common interests.  What are the “communities” that Zinn identifies?  What “interests” do they share?  What “interests” of one group might be in opposition to an “interest” of another group?  
4.  If communities share common interests, did Columbus and Las Casas belong to the same community?  If so, what are their common interests?  (What was Columbus in the Caribbean for?  Las Casas?)  If not, what interests separate them into different communities?  Did Las Casas have more in common ideologically with the Arawaks than he did with Columbus?
5.  From what you have read so far, how would you characterize Howard Zinn’s ideological bias?