9781429242189

What's the Problem? A Brief Guide to Thinking Critically by noted author, Paula Rothenberg, helps students develop their critical thinking skills in the context of some of the most interesting and pressing problems of our day. The 24 articles in the 8 parts of this brief collection cover a wide range of urgent issues - hunger, consumerism, crime, health care, abstinence education and more.

These issues provide rich opportunities for students to identify and analyze different perspectives and to uncover misconceptions and biases in the way the problems are defined and the solutions proposed.

Each of the three articles in each section concludes with a set of questions that allow students to look at how questions surrounding the issue are framed and formulated. Reading the articles in order encourages students to identify the perspective from which the article is written and to discover the hidden assumptions that often make it difficult to think critically.

Paula Rothenberg writes, lectures, and consults on a variety of topics, including multicultural curriculum transformation, issues of inequality, equity, and privilege, globalizing the curriculum, and white privilege. From 1989 to 2006, she served as Director of The New Jersey Project on Inclusive Scholarship, Curriculum, and Teaching, and Professor of Philosophy and Women’s Studies at The William Paterson University of New Jersey. She is the author of Invisible Privilege: A Memoir about Race, Class and Gender (University Press of Kansas), and, with Worth Publishers, Race, Class, and Gender, Eighth Edition (2010) and Beyond Borders: Thinking Critically about Global Issues (2006); her anthology, White Privilege: Readings on the Other Side of Racism, will soon go into its fourth edition. Paula Rothenberg is also co-editor of a number of other anthologies, including Creating an Inclusive College Curriculum: A Teaching Sourcebook from the New Jersey Project and Feminist Frameworks: Alternative Theoretical Accounts of the Relations between Women and Men. Her articles and essays appear in journals and anthologies across the disciplines and many have been widely reprinted.

About the Author	p. v
Introduction: What's the Problem?	p. 1
Turning Your Lawn into a Victory Garden Won't Save You	p. 10
Turning Your Lawn into a Victory Garden Won't Save You-Fighting the Corporations Will	p. 12
Questions for 1.1	p. 17
A Shortage of Democracy, Not Food	p. 18
Questions for 1.2	p. 20
Want Amid Plenty: From Hunger to Inequality	p. 21
Questions for 1.3	p. 32
Does Shopping for a Good Cause Really Help? Activism and the New Chic	p. 33
The Rage Over (Red)	p. 35
Questions for 2.1	p. 38
Gift-Wrapped Guilt? My Adventure with Ethical Shopping	p. 39
Questions for 2.2	p. 43
Ethical Shopping Is Just Another Way of Showing How Rich You Are	p. 44
Questions for 2.3	p. 46
It Didn't Happen and Besides, They Deserved It	p. 48
Sand Castles and Snake Pits: Homelessness, Public Policy, and the Law of Unintended Consequences	p. 50
Questions for 3.1	p. 58
"Everyone Deserves a Place to Sleep at Night"	p. 59
Questions for 3.2	p. 61
Hope for the Homeless?	p. 62
Questions for 3.3	p. 65
Poverty Is Hazardous to Your Health	p. 66
Health Policy Placebos	p. 68
Questions for 4.1	p. 70
Poverty Is Hazardous to Your Health	p. 71
Questions for 4.2	p. 73
Inequality: Bad for Your Health: An Interview with Social Epidemiologist Ichiro Kawachi	p. 74
Questions for 4.3	p. 82
Crime and Punishment	p. 83
I Am Not the Enemy	p. 85
Questions for 5.1	p. 86
Reports Find Racial Gap in Drug Arrests	p. 88
Questions for 5.2	p. 90
The Harm of "Get Tough"Policies	p. 91
Questions for 5.3	p. 93
Abstinence: Whose Privilege, Whose Power?	p. 94
Would You Pledge Your Virginity to Your Father?	p. 96
Questions for 6.1	p. 104
Red Sex, Blue Sex	p. 105
Questions for 6.2	p. 112
Is the Pope Crazy?	p. 114
Questions for 6.3	p. 116
"Hello Central, Give Me Heaven"	p. 117
Moms in Touch with God	p. 119
Questions for 7.1	p. 120
Stress Test: Why Americans Want to Believe That Our Mental States Can Control Our Physical Maladies	p. 121
Questions for 7.2	p. 123
Is Prayer Good for Your Health?	p. 124
Questions for 7.3	p. 131
It's the Solution, Not the Problem	p. 132
Human Greed Lies at the Root of Economic Crisis: Interview with	p. 134
Questions for 8.1	p. 138
The Lesson from the [Fiscal] Crisis: Regulations Are Worthless	p. 139
Questions for 8.2	p. 142
It's the Solution, Not the Problem	p. 143
Questions for 8.3	p. 149
Conclusion: What's the Problem? Questions and Answers	p. 150
Acknowledgments	p. 151
Index	p. 153
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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What's the Problem? A Brief Guide to Thinking Critically

What's the Problem? A Brief Guide to Thinking Critically

1429242183

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