First and fifth periods worked on choice debates. We’ll be having the debates later in the week; today we worked on the first scenario, fleshing out one side of the argument and beginning to work on the second side.

The scenario we used is from Bargaining Games, by J. Keith Murnighan:

You and an acquaintance, “Pat”, are walking down the street when you meet an older couple with a bag of money. The older couple makes the following offer: We wish to give the two of you $100,000 if you can decide how it should be divided between the two of you in the next 3 minutes. You say, “So, Pat, what do you say? How about fifty thousand dollars each”. To your dismay, Pat answers, “Gee, I’m really sorry, but my mother needs an expensive operation. So, I’ll take eighty thousand dollars and you can have twenty thousand. I won’t settle for anything less!”

Pro: Argue that Pat should agree to the 50/50 split.
Con: Argue that Pat’s financial needs are great, so you should agree to the 80/20 split.

We’ll be dividing into groups for individual scenarios for debate tomorrow.

Second and fourth periods began by examining a sentence from chapter eighteen of Great Expectations. 

I had known him the moment I saw him looking over the settle, and now that I stood confronting him with his hand upon my shoulder, I checked off again in detail, his large head, his dark complexion, his deep-set eyes, his bushy black eyebrows, his large watch-chain, his strong black dots of beard and whisker, and even the smell of scented soap on his great hand.

Afterward, we looked at the character Jaggers in some detail.

Homework

• First and fifth periods: complete the three arguments and their rebuttals for the 80/20 split (the con argument above).
• Second and fourth periods: work on the Lord of the Flies project.