UNCC The Ethics and Rationality of Voting Essay

Each student will do solo or group work on an aspect of citizenship such as education, healthcare, voting (if your country has it), or some other big topic you can argue is important for being a good citizen. The goal will be to relate all of the ethical systems we study to this larger topic – we will comment on all of the systems, but not all of them will work well.

Goals:

1. Find information: Research the area of your choice, whether education, healthcare, justice, service work, etc. Examples of how to start the research: Interview someone, visit a site, watch a video (includes documentary movies). This is not primarily a research paper, though; don’t spend hours and hours on this.

2. Organize information: Identify key findings from your research. Do NOT simply explain how things happen to be here in the US; compare to at least two other industrialized nations from different parts of the world.

3. Identify a problem: Explain one problem the community is facing.

4. Create a citizen-plan-of-action: Describe potential solutions for the problem. If you cannot think of a solution, describe an action you will take in your own life to make the problem slightly better.

5. Reference theory: Identify specific theories to support your plan of action – this is where you will link to ethical systems we study in this course.

6. Present the citizen-plan-of-action to a small group in class.

If you do a paper (you can do a web site, game, song, video, etc.): five pages, double-spaced, 12 pt Times New Roman. No more than 3 references. Do not quote a lot of other people. Write this yourself.