If all of the elements of this lesson plan are employed, students will develop the following powers, skills, and understanding:
- 1
To give students a basic familiarity with a work of tremendous intellectual and cultural importance, as well as the still-ongoing debates that it has inspired.
- 2
To provide students with appropriate reading skills and critical thinking skills with which to grapple with advanced texts.
- 3
To get students to question and debate a variety of fundamental epistemological, moral, social, and political issues, ranging from the proper organization of society to the nature of knowledge.
- 4
To equip students with important competencies, such as an expanded...