The Social Contract Lesson Plan

Debate: Politics without Populism?

Kind of Activity:

Group Work

Objective:

Students will apply concepts from the text in an examination of present-day politics.

Common Core Standards:

N/A

Structure:

For this exercise, the teacher should ask students to prepare for a classwide debate and divide the class into three groups. The question that students will debate will be: whether Jean-Jacques Rousseau would have approved of modern-day populism.

After the teacher explains this and answers any other questions that they might have, students should begin by getting together in their groups and deciding upon a list of three arguments that they want to present in favor of...