Assignment:
CURRENT EVENTS REPORT:
Students are expected to follow current events by regularly following news coverage of current events from quality sources. It is crucial in helping you to understand and make sense of the issues covered in this course. Some quality sources that I would suggest to consider are the Economist (www.economist.com), the New York Times (www.nytimes.com), national public radio (89.3 FM), and KPFK (90.7 FM).
As a portion of your grade, students will report on a current news item associated with the United States. To receive full credit, students must:
[a] explain the item and do it,
[b] in their own words. Finally, they must,
[c] tell how it relates to a specific chapter in the text book. Items will come from the print or broadcast (electronic) media.
They are to be submitted to me via the e-mail as an attachment. This 25 points is part of the "Class Participation" portion of the course.
POLITICAL IDEOLOGY PAPER
Political Ideology Paper- Write a three page, double spaced paper in which you explain the factors that impacted the development of your political ideology. Pay close attention to race, religion and socio-economic status. You may include other factors such as gender and region that the book also mentions.
The purpose of this assignment is to get you to think critically about how your political ideology developed. You could begin with a discussion of what you should be, republican or democrat, according to the statistics mentioned in the book (i.e. Latino, Catholic, from a working class family...probably a democrat), then discuss whether or not you are consistent with the statistics. Why or why not?
A paper that merely talks about your political beliefs without an explanation of how they came about and relate to who you are, is NOT what the assignment is asking for. Always connect your beliefs to some part of your profile! Relevant chapters in the Sabato and O'Connor test are: (political socialization) and (party identification). Any paper shorter than three full pages will be docked points!
Papers may be submitted to me via e-mail. Please attach your paper to your e-mail as a Word document!