Absent teacher

I’m sorry; I promise I’ll be there on Thursday.

First, I’d like you to take the homework and share them in small groups.

Next, I’d like you to choose the dialog that you liked the best and convert it into a short play that will be filmed. I’ve left a video camera with a tape already cued up.
The dialogs should be about 5 minutes long, include a Socrates-figure as well as questioners. The Socrates figure should teach the assembly by asking leading questions rather than lecturing. The questioners should start out believing one way and end up believing something different by the end. The camera operator should do his/her best to get the interplay of conversation and the sound reasonably audible.

Next, we’ll read an article “Why I want a Wife” Make annotations (at least 3) to the article at my AP texts site and then –in your blogs— respond to the article with the following questions:

1. What was your first reaction to the article?
2. What has changed (if anything) in terms of gender equality in our country? Would Sykes’s criticisms still be relevant today?
3. Do you feel that women are discriminated against in our society and if so how? If not, what has changed?
4. Could an equivalent essay entitled “Why I want a husband” be written? If so, what would it contain and what points would it make?

Finally, if there’s time, ask them to read the selection from Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas and answer the following questions.

1. In the beginning of the selection, what complaint does Rassalas have against his sister’s method of argumentation?
2. Summarize the 2nd paragraph. Why is “calamity” not so bad?
3. Why does Rasselas believe that “marriage is one of the means of happiness?” What is his sister’s response?
4. Summarize the 6th paragraph.
5. The Princess’s response (“To the mind, as to the eye, it is difficult to compare with exactness objects vast…:”) is pretty complicated. What is the philosophical point she’s trying to make?
6. What argument do the two have about marriage?  What good does Rasselas see in it and what evil does his sister see?
7. What rhetorical strategies do you see employed by both speakers? Be specific.