Teaching a class about firearms ethics.

[Demitrios]

Monday, April 12th, I have a lesson plan due for my early childhood education class. The idea is a thematic unit based on any topic and how to teach them in multiple subjects. I only have to teach one of the subjects in front of my class, for 25 to 30 minutes and I've decided to do language arts. My goal is to have students choose to be pro, anti or neutral on the matter of guns, however there's a twist. I will have them study their stance, write a two page essay with sited facts from the group of their choice and the FBI database. I'll teach various other things as well, such as how the NICS check works and the four basic rules of firearms safety. I have to take a neutral stance on firearms, even though I'm obviously pro-gun, but I want to be able to challenge the pro and anti gun people in my class so I can get them to actually look up a subject before choosing a stance because they heard some jack-ass say one or two unfounded things on the subject. Can you guys give me ay hard facts with sited sources, or any websites with proven facts? Any advice you guys would like to give me I'd love to hear it, remember, I'm actually teaching this class to college students, even though I'm in an early childhood education class.

 

[hso]

Look at the stickies in Activism and you'll find both straight informational and news sources.

Guncite.com

Gunfacts.info

 

[Dan Crocker]

How old are early-education kids? Will they have to cite using MLA?

 

[SpecialKalltheway]

If you are truly supposed to be neutral on the position then you should not look up information before hand. Collect their papers before they present them and then you as the neutral observer then use their sources and check them for credibility. If you are adding your own outside sources then you are not neutral.

Allowing the students to be neutral also makes no sense to me. Being neutral is a position held by one simple statement "I don't care one way or another on this topic" that should get a neutral student an A+, because that is what it means to be neutral on a topic. Tell them that they have to either be a pro or anti. If you want you can even randomly assign pro and anti to halves of the class. That way you will have some pro's writing from an anti stand point and some anti's writing for a pro stand point. This way you won't find yourself "accidentally" giving the anti papers all bad grades, since it would not be necessarily their personal views. Only those that include true facts and figures that support their side get good grades. The ones that write on emotion only(including the pro's) get the lower grades.

 

[Demitrios]

Perhaps I should have been a little more detailed. I'm doing a lesson plan meant for highschool kids, in a college class for early childhood education. In short this lesson is aimed at highschoolers but college kids will be my audience. Since I'm on a limited time scale and I'm not their teacher I can't hand out homework so in the class I'll be having the students discuss their their beliefs and whatever facts they use, thus why I need to know actual hard facts. Even though I'll remain neutral I'll be doing so by playing devil's advocate for both pro and anti gun. By the way, thank you HSO for the links.

On a side note. . . I just broke my cherry today and got me an RIA 1911-A1, brand new, for $320 .