Instructor's Resource Manual on Social Problems

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Instructor's Resource Manual on Social Problems Instructor’s Resource Manual on Social Problems Third Edition Compiled and Edited by Lutz Kaelber University of Vermont and Walter Carroll Bridgewater State College AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION 1307 New York Avenue NW #700 Washington, DC 20005 (202) 383-9005 ASA Resource Materials for Teaching Copyright 2001 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION Documents distributed by the American Sociological Association are not intended to represent the official position of the American Sociological Association. Instead, they constitute a medium by which colleagues may communicate with each other to improve the teaching of sociology. Table of Contents _____________________________________________________________________________________________ TABLE OF CONTENTS Introductory Essay: Teaching Social Problems ........................................................................................................1 Syllabi .........................................................................................................................................................................11 Walter F. Carroll, Bridgewater State College..............................................................................................................13 James A. Crone, Hanover College...............................................................................................................................16 Brenda Forster, Elmhurst College ...............................................................................................................................21 Shelly K. Habel, Whitman College .............................................................................................................................28 Jenifer Hamil-Luker, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill ................................................................................37 Lutz Kaelber, Lyndon State College............................................................................................................................43 Kimberly A. Mahaffy, University of New Hampshire ................................................................................................49 Jack Niemonen, University of South Dakota...............................................................................................................53 Mark D. Rubinfeld, Loyola University, New Orleans.................................................................................................62 Marybeth Stalp, University of Georgia........................................................................................................................66 Stephen F. Steele, Anne Arundel Community College ...............................................................................................71 James A. Vela-McConnell, Augsburg College............................................................................................................74 Rose Weitz, Arizona State University .........................................................................................................................79 Assignments, Exercises, and Policy Guidelines ......................................................................................................83 M. Eugenia Deerman, University of Michigan............................................................................................................85 Brenda Forster, Elmhurst College ...............................................................................................................................89 Shelly K. Habel, Whitman College .............................................................................................................................94 Shirley Jackson, Southern Connecticut State University...........................................................................................115 Bruce Mork, University of Minnesota, Duluth..........................................................................................................120 Karrie Snyder, New York University ........................................................................................................................122 Marybeth Stalp, University of Georgia......................................................................................................................124 Stephen F. Steele, Anne Arundel Community College .............................................................................................125 Sherrie Steiner-Aeschlimann, Washington State University .....................................................................................127 James A. Vela-McConnell, Augsburg College..........................................................................................................131 Guide to Web Resources for Social Problems ......................................................................................................133 List of Contributors.................................................................................................................................................153 About the Editors.....................................................................................................................................................158 i Introductory Essay: Teaching Social Problems Introductory Essay _____________________________________________________________________________________________ TEACHING SOCIAL PROBLEMS: CHALLENGES, RESOURCES, & OPPORTUNITIES* This third edition of the ASA Instructor’s Resource Manual on Social Problems provides materials to help those teaching social problems for the first time as well as experienced instructors. The manual includes 13 syllabi, 35 exercises and assignments, and a guide to web resources. In this introduction we reflect on what we have learned in compiling and editing these materials and make several suggestions for fruitful directions for teaching social problems. First we want to explain how we compiled this manual. We solicited materials for this manual as widely as possible, placing requests for contributions on the Teachsoc electronic discussion list (twice), in the ASA newsletter Footnotes, and in the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) newsletter. We also tried to contact all contributors to the previous edition and all SSSP division chairs and newsletter editors. In response to our requests, we received about 20 syllabi, a wide variety of assignments, and other assorted materials. We do not claim that the materials in this manual are a representative sample of all approaches to teaching social problems, but we do think that they provide important information on how social problems courses are taught at the beginning of the 21st century. Perhaps even more interesting, they indicate how social problems are not taught. Reflecting on teaching social problems leads to an obvious question, one that Brooks and Broad raised in the previous edition of this manual: “What does the social problems course add to a curriculum, both for majors and for minors” (Brooks and Broad 1997:1)? This question took on immediacy for one of us recently in the context of new program development. A joint Sociology and Anthropology department that had long offered a criminology concentration within the sociology major was developing a new major in Criminal Justice. Discussion of the new program was intense and often contentious. Much of the debate focused on whether students in the Criminal Justice major would be required to take Introduction to Sociology or whether they could take either Introduction to Sociology or Social Problems as a required introductory course. Keeping in mind that the new major was criminal justice rather than sociology, one can make good arguments for either position. However, that is not our point here. What was striking about much of this disagreement was the view of social problems courses on which it was based. That view seemed to reflect, at least in part, dated assumptions about the nature of such courses. Brooks and Broad had noted that many still questioned whether the social problems course was “just a grab-bag of ‘problems du jour,’ an a-theoretical collage of sociological voyeurism that only serves to remind students of a high school civics class” (1997:1)? The second edition of the manual offered evidence that the stereotype was not true in 1997; this edition makes it even clearer. The materials we received contradict the image of social problems courses as “grab-bags of ‘problems du jour.’” Naturally, social problems classes by their nature do focus on social problems and issues that are in the news, but 3 Introductory Essay _____________________________________________________________________________________________ most of these classes then anchor an analysis of those problems in basic social structures and social relationships. It is true that social problems classes do not focus on the discipline as systematically as do introduction to sociology courses, although introductory classes certainly vary in this regard. Nevertheless, despite the wide variety of ways in which the instructors represented here approach social problems, the essential sociological soundness of these courses is apparent. In the next section we discuss how these courses indicate that soundness. TEACHING SOCIAL PROBLEMS TODAY The materials we received demonstrate the diversity of approaches sociologists take to teaching social problems. However, we can identify some common themes or trends underlying that variety.
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