Upper School: Salon Project

ACADEMIC HIGHLIGHT Upper School SALON PROJECT

By Steve Retz

History Department Chair

Akey project for 10th graders that connects the past and the present is an integrated English/History unit called the “Salon Project.” Students begin their year learning about key ideas from the European Enlightenment Era, ideas about Human Nature, Government, and the Social Contract. Students learn the history, and a Culture of Performance unit then brings those concepts into the present.

In addition to studying philosophers from The Enlightenment, students also learn about several thinkers from the 20th and 21st centuries who represent an array of different points of view on the role of the Individual, Society, and Government. Each student researches a specific philosopher or thinker--this year’s list included Wendell Berry, Angela Davis, Frantz Fanon, Milton Friedman, Mahatma Gandhi, Emma Goldman, and Ayn Rand--and students engage in scholarly research to become experts on the ideas of their philosophers. They write expository essays illustrating those ideas, and then they

prepare to represent and role-play their philosophers in a moderated discussion, as if they were present in an Enlightenment-Era Salon discussion.

Groups of student/philosophers are asked questions that require them to articulate the probable positions of their philosophers and to demonstrate their likely viewpoints on the proper roles that Individuals , Society, and the Government should play in the framework of a Social Contract. The questions that are posed to students are drawn from controversial current events, so students need to know the ideas and be able to apply them in novel situations. At the conclusion of the project, students write a reflective response in which they explain their own, personal views of the social contract and which of the various philosophers they most agreed and disagreed with. ☜