TEACHSOC: Re: First Day of Class Activities

[Sarah Murray]

For my Violence class, I always go around the room and ask students if they think we are living in a more violent world than when their parents were growing up.  They invariably say yes, and then I present the statistics that show the violence rate has declined in the last 30 years.  Then I give some provocative possible explanations on why the crime rate has gone down (you've probably heard the Freakanomics claim that legalized abortion has decreased the crime rate) and we discuss those reasons.  Then I point out that, while our violent CRIME rate has declined, we are still the most lethally violent of all advanced capitalist nations, and I ask how BOTH facts can be true: that our crime rate is the lowest in 30- years, and yet we are still a country that is deadly in its violence, more than other comparable nations.  We talk about how to measure violence: pollution, infant mortality rate, incarceration and homicide -- and discover that maybe all violence isn't associated with crime.   Sarah Murray WPUNJ ----- Original Message ----- From: Michael Klausner To: teachsoc@googlegroups.com Sent: Tuesday, May 16, 2006 8:52 AM Subject: TEACHSOC: First Day of Class Activities Greetings,   If anyone still has list of suggestions for the first day of class, I’d appreciate if you would post them again.   Thanks, Michael --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Teaching Sociology" group. To post to this group, send email to teachsoc@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/teachsoc -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---