The mini test is worth 10% of your total mark in this course and is in two parts: 10 multiple choice questions worth 0.5 marks each for a total of 5 marks and your choice of a series of written answer questions, worth a possible 5 marks.
The test covers all of the material presented in weeks 8-10: Politics, Climate Change, Capitalism.
You should look over this list and if there is anything you don't recognize or aren't sure you understand, you should review it in the written lesson or ask me for clarification:
- You should know what ideology means
- You should understand Herman's idea of "the personal being political" and be aware of the example she used (coffee)
- You should understand what the left and right axis of the Political Compass is about
- You should understand what the authoritarian and libertarian axis of the Political Compass is about
- You should know which quadrants the five most popular Canadian parties fall into, according to the makers of the Political Compass tool
- The meaning and significance of “all my relations” for the climate change topic
- Mitigation strategies currently on the table
- Ways you can personally work to combat climate change
- The effect of meat production on climate change and the percentage of greenhouse gas production for food that is a result of the industrialized production of meat
- The idea of environmental rights
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- Capitalism and the briefly outlined development of it
- The Marxist critique of capitalism: Alienated Labour
- The Division of Labour and why Marx thought it was evil
- Postcolonial and social equity critiques of capitalism
- Neoliberal assumptions about capitalism
- The problems raised by neoliberal globalization
- The concern about the future of wage labour in a world of Artificial Intelligence and robots
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The multiple choice questions and the written answer topics below expect you to have a good understanding of this information and these ideas.
Written answer topics
- Please don't just type your answer into the Blackboard submission box. You should write your answer offline in Word or a similar program and save a copy in case anything goes wrong with your Blackboard submission. I strongly recommend that you write any posts, written exam answers, essays etc in any of your classes ahead of the due date, put what you have written aside, and then come back to it with fresh eyes and proofread and edit it for clarity, spelling, and so forth.
- Do not upload PDFs or Apple Pages files. When you are ready to submit, you should go to the submission page in Blackboard and either click Write Submission and copy and paste your answer into the box provided or click Browse Local Files next to Attach File and attach a Microsoft Word doc file only.
The topics for the written answer expect you both to show your accurate knowledge of the material I taught and to do a little creative thinking about it yourself.
You will probably want to write between 400 and 800 words. More is fine.
I recommend that you read the written lesson for whichever topic you are writing about before writing your answer. Your answer can use material you wrote in one of your discussion posts (or even quote from other people's posts) if the material is relevant.
WRITTEN ANSWER INSTRUCTIONS: WRITE AN INFORMAL BUT CLEAR RESPONSE TO ONE OF THE FOLLOWING TOPICS
You will probably want to write between 400 and 800 words. More is fine.
- In the reading that accompanies the lesson on politics, Aileen Herman argues that "The Personal is Political." What does Herman mean by that, how does she explore the idea, and what do you think of her view on this (and why do you think that)?
- What reasons were explored in the lesson for why some people don't vote? Do you think there are other reasons that haven't been mentioned there? Jim took a brief look at some ways people may vote that he suggested to be not entirely responsible. What were the ways of voting Jim criticized? Choose two of them and discuss ways in which they are good and ways in which they might be bad approaches to voting.
- Explain the idea of "environmental" rights as discussed in the climate change lesson. In what ways can you imagine it coming into conflict with other, more established human rights, like individual personal freedom, the right to work, non-discrimination, etc. As of today, are you personally interested in making environmental rights a more prominent aspect of human rights legislation? Why or why not?
- Choose one of the critiques of capitalism outlined in the lesson for week 10. Explain the criticism in your own words, as fully as you can. Now, imagine we wanted to change things so that that objection to capitalism would no longer be valid. What sort of steps would be involved? Could we keep some parts of capitalism while revising others or would we need to abandon the capitalist model for a different approach to producing and distributing goods? Feel free to use your imagination on the last part, but make sure you have accurately described the critique first, in your own words.