Crash Landing! How do you create a society from scratch? What rules are needed to ensure that chaos does not erupt and destroy meaningful progress? Who has power and what should they be able to do with it? These are just some of the questions students will explore while using this module, questions about political and economic philosophy.
Through the lens of a crash landing on a deserted island, students will create their own answers to these fundamental questions that all governments are confronted with:
1. Who should make laws and how?
2. Who should govern and how?
3. Who should judge and how?
4. What should people work on?
5. Who should get what?
Grounded in the historic and current political-economic ideologies, such as conservatism, liberalism, socialism, libertarianism, and fascism, this module will help students understand their Civic Mirror country as well as their real-world governments and societies. Students will also explore various economic systems to gain a solid understanding of how economic decision making affects a country and its citizens. Through a series of case studies that examine issues such as total versus zero government control, the state’s intrusion on personal freedom and total economic freedom versus total economic equality, students will be challenged to conduct a cost-benefit analysis before devising their own political-economic philosophy.
At the end of this module, all the political and economic ideologies are synthesized for students on a two-continuum spectrum that makes it easy for students to see where their beliefs are concerning all the others. This will not only help them answer the questions from the performance task, but will also help them make better sense of the underpinning philosophies that are driving the political and economic decisions made in their Civic Mirror countries and their real-life country too. After this module, students will have the knowledge and confidence to be asking their governments questions!
