Teacher's Guide - Class Planning Guide

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The Contract
Part 1 - [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] | Part 2 - [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] | Part 3 - [12[13] [14] [15]

Advice: This chapter begins with two sections that are largely text. The quotes in 13.1 should be enough to get a discussion going all by themselves, but in case everyone is hung over that morning I have included some questions that could get things moving. The connections between 13.1 and 13.2 are important. 13.2 deals with some less charged and more manageable versions of the questions in 13.1 and shows some ways of beginning to think about them. It is worth asking the class what the relations between the two sections are. Although the content of 11.3 is not essential, the historical perspective in it may make the issues more accessible for many students.

The activity in 13.4 does not presuppose an acquaintance with the prisoner's dilemma explained in 13.5. You may think that the prisoner's dilemma is too advanced a topic for an introductory course, but my opinion is that, though it takes a little pounding to get the basic facts of it into one's head, the insight this gives is so fundamental that the sooner one gains it the better. If you choose not to cover 13.5 then you should also skip 13.6. You will then find that some allusions to prisoner's dilemmas in the last two sections of the chapter - marked as essential - will need to be explained to the students. Which sections you cover in this chapter depends on whether you are using it as an introduction to the metaphysics of morality or to political philosophy.

Roughly, the first of these means sections 13.1, 13.2, 13.5, 13.11 are the core, and the second means that 13.2. 13.3, 13.5, 13.6, (13.7), 13.8, (13.9), 13.10 are. You may want to make the choice explicit to the class if you are asking them what topics they are interested in covering.