Common Core @USM-LAC  Tags: lewiston gen_ed common_core  

1. Apply democratic ideas to a given current situation in order to construct new meaning from these principles (inspired by ACRL STandard 3.3)

LCC 320 begins with the assumption that students have completed LCC 220 (or its equivalent) and are familiar with the origins, theories, structures, and processes of democracy, as well as with what are known as democratic values and the challenges the new republic faced in establishing and applying these values during its first 100 years of existence.  This course will therefore focus primarily on the United States from c.1877 to the present, exploring the various ways that U.S. democracy has successfully worked to become more inclusive and complete and the ways in which, along with the reasons why, it has often failed to live up to its own ideals.  The course also explores current threats to certain fundamental aspects of our democracy, as well as obstacles that stand in the way of further progress in actualizing the democratic promise of liberty and justice for all citizens. The over-riding goal of the course is to help students look unflinchingly at our national flaws, while at the same time imparting to them a measure of pride in what this nation has achieved in launching history’s first large, and today’s longest running experiment in creating and sustaining a democratic polity, and also to give them hope and confidence that positive change can occur in the on-going struggle for national improvement and maturity.