teach 99%

[Plane]

http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/who-are-the-99-ways-to-teach-about-occupy-wall-street/

October 11, 2011, 3:44 pm
Who Are the 99%? Ways to Teach About Occupy Wall Street
By SARAH KAVANAGH, HOLLY EPSTEIN OJALVO and KATHERINE SCHULTEN

Michael Appleton for The New York Times
 
On Columbus Day, students from Central Park East I and II schools joined the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in Zuccotti Park.
 
Go to related post on City Room » | Go to related Times Topics page »

Current Events
Teaching ideas based on New York Times content.

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Overview | Why are protesters occupying Wall Street? What are they protesting, and what are their goals? In this lesson, students are introduced to Occupy Wall Street and then investigate the movement more deeply.

Warm-Up | Provide students with the following six slogans that have been displayed on placards during demonstrations being staged as part of a political movement. (At this point, do not identify the movement; you may also want to obscure the fact that the movement is contemporary.) Invite the class to guess which movement the placards are from.

Slogans:

“Democracy Not Corporatization”

“End the Oligarchy”

“Human Need Not Corporate Greed”

“Jobs, Justice and Education”

“Save the American Dream”

“We are the 99%”

Elicit or reveal that the slogans have been displayed at a series of protests called Occupy Wall Street.

Alternatively or additionally, have the class take the Opinionator blog’s Occupy Wall Street quiz. And if desired, show photographs and/or video (above) of protests in downtown Manhattan and elsewhere around the country. Invite students to share their impressions.

Ask: Based on what you may have heard and on these slogans, what do you think the activists are protesting? What do you think they care about and want? If desired, note that the protesters and their adherents oppose corporate greed, social inequity and other disparities between rich and poor. What other movements and protests does this one remind you of, and why?

Related | Students read the Times Topics page overview of the Occupy Wall Street protests focusing on the following questions:

Occupy Wall Street is a diffuse group of activists who say they stand against corporate greed, social inequality and other disparities between rich and poor. On Sept. 17, 2011, the group began a loosely organized protest in New York’s financial district, encamping in Zuccotti Park, a privately owned park open to the public, in Lower Manhattan.
The idea, according to some organizers, was to camp out for weeks or even months to replicate the kind, if not the scale, of protests that had erupted earlier in 2011 in places as varied as Egypt, Spain and Israel.

Read the entire article with your class, using the questions below.

Questions | For discussion and reading comprehension:

Do you think that there is a central message of protestors at Occupy Wall Street? If so, what would you say it is? What leads you to believe that this is the central message? If you think that there is no one central message, what do you think is holding these protestors together?
From what you have read, what would you classify as the most important events of the protests thus far? Why do you think these events were the most important?
How would you characterize the police response to the protests? Do you think that the police overreacted or enacted an appropriate response? Defend your position.
What more do you want to know about these protests?
Would you consider joining these protests? Why or why not?

RELATED RESOURCES
From The Learning Network
Lesson: The Life of the (Tea) Party: Comparing Social Protest Movements
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From NYTimes.com
Times Topics: Occupy Wall Street
Room for Debate: Is It Effective to Occupy Wall Street?
Interactive: What’s Your Economic Outlook?
Around the Web
Occupy Wall Street
We Are the 99 Percent
Adbusters: Occupy Wall Street
Activity | The following activities approach the Occupy Wall Street movement from a variety of angles. Choose the activity or activity set that best aligns with your curricular goals.

Investigate the History of the Protests: Read about the history of the protests. What sparked the first protest? When and where did it begin? How has it changed over time? What has remained the same? What controversies have arisen? What helped the protests grow and spread? What organizations have gotten involved? How is the movement different now than when it first started? How is it continuing to evolve? Create a paper or interactive timeline illustrating important events that sparked, changed or grew the movement, then analyze the movement’s development.

Debate the Movement’s Potential: Examine different opinions on whether the Occupy Wall Street protests could help bring about political and economic change. Use our Debatable Issues graphic organizer (PDF) to keep track of arguments. Hold a debate over the protest’s potential.

Compare Occupy Wall Street With Other Movements: Two major American political and economic movements today are Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party. Is Occupy Wall Street the left’s answer to the Tea Party? Or does it have a long way to go before it gains that kind of legitimacy and power? Find out similarities and differences exist between the two movements, and between these movements and past social protest movements in United States history. Or, to broaden the perspective, compare Occupy Wall Street with social movements around the world, like the Arab Spring and the anti-austerity protests in Greece, taking into consideration how the world sees Occupy Wall Street.

Connect the Protests to the Economy: What are the facts and figures underlying Occupy Wall Street’s focus on the top 1 percent of the economy? What economic conditions helped give rise to the movement? What is the government doing to stimulate job growth and address declining incomes? How do Americans feel about the economy overall? Choose a specific data set related to the economy and see whether it can be traced in some way to the rhetoric and goals of Occupy Wall Street. If you were participating in the protests, how would you use that data to make a point? If you were a politician wanting to address that issue, how would you do it? If desired, register where you fall on the interactive feature “What’s Your Economic Outlook?”

Place the Movement Along the Political Continuum: Many Occupy Wall Street participants have identified themselves as neither Democrat nor Republican; some call themselves anarchists. Where do the ideas and ideals fall on the political spectrum? How are politicians responding? How might the movement start to affect.........

[Kramer]

Did they ever make it to any Tea Party events?

[Plane]

Did they ever make it to any Tea Party events?

That is a good question.


I don't think that the TEA party ever got the MSM juice that the 99% are getting.

[Xavier_Onassis]

The Teabaggers never tried to actually educate anyone. They hate teachers and education in general.
They got , and still get, LOTS of publicity.

[BT]

The Teabaggers never tried to actually educate anyone. They hate teachers and education in general.
They got , and still get, LOTS of publicity.

That's a lie borne of ignorance.

[Kramer]

The Teabaggers never tried to actually educate anyone. They hate teachers and education in general.
They got , and still get, LOTS of publicity.

That's a lie borne of ignorance.

good enough reason to retroactively abort any and all liberals.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Teabaggers seem to blame teachers for everything. Some want to go back to MacGuffy Readers and believe that the country is in bad shape mostly because of a lack of prayer in the public schools. The whole "tax form on a postcard" is a reaction to an inability to do math or understand economics

[BT]

Teabaggers seem to blame teachers for everything. Some want to go back to MacGuffy Readers and believe that the country is in bad shape mostly because of a lack of prayer in the public schools. The whole "tax form on a postcard" is a reaction to an inability to do math or understand economics

Could you provide some proof of this observation. Perhaps some placards or manifesto's would be good.

Tax forms on a postcard has little to do with property taxes and millage rates which are typically used to fund schools.

Your slur on tea party members being anti-education has about as much truth to it as the slur that all blacks loves them some watermelon.

[Plane]

Teabaggers seem to blame teachers for everything. Some want to go back to MacGuffy Readers and believe that the country is in bad shape mostly because of a lack of prayer in the public schools. The whole "tax form on a postcard" is a reaction to an inability to do math or understand economics

   I am a disatisfied customer of the public education system, but I remember having some very good teachers and some burnt out teachers, the main problem was not the teachers personally it was a dynamic of the larger system that the teachers were frustrated trying to deal with.
   If few of us can handle the math required for doing our own taxes , is this evidence that the education was poorly done or that the tax law is needlessly complex?

[Xavier_Onassis]

 If few of us can handle the math required for doing our own taxes , is this evidence that the education was poorly done or that the tax law is needlessly complex?

====================================================================
I would say that the math needed to do all the 1040 forms I have ever done is mostly addition and subtraction, and looking up rates in a tax table. If I use any tax preparation program, I only enter numbers and do no math at all.

The most difficult thing might be calculating a percentage. There has been nothing on any tax form I have completed that has involved anything more difficult than 8th grade math. I have done my own taxes every year since I was 20, and have never been audited.

Once, I had an investment in a gas-drilling venture that involved a depletion allowance. The directions were vague, and there were two ways to do it. One way, I would pay $1.22 and the other way, nothing. I decided to take the nothing route, and apparently that was the way to go.

It was a $300 investment, and earned about $100 the first year, and much less for three following years.

Maybe I got it wrong, but I figured that the worst that would happen would be the IRS would send me a bill for the difference, and they didn't.

Getting all the work together is by far the hardest part of doing taxes. The math is simple.

[sirs]

Teabaggers seem to blame teachers for everything. Some want to go back to MacGuffy Readers and believe that the country is in bad shape mostly because of a lack of prayer in the public schools.

And your allegation is based on ......... what facts again??