Essay Question for Reflective Essay on “Citizenship and Diversity”
PDP 150 Section 02, Professor Frueh
In the interest of weaning you off the extensive essay questions that I have been giving you and getting you used to
the more sparse prompts that you will have for your personal reflective essays, I’m just going to give you the single
overarching question and let you be more independent about how you choose to construct the answer.
Overarching Question: What is the relationship between having a diverse society and having a just society?
As with all the questions so far, it is possible to write a paper that gives me easy answers that you know you are
supposed to say. I’m interested in you spending enough energy to think these things through for yourself. It is
perfectly fine to end up agreeing with what you are supposed to say, but you need to prove to me that you got there
on your own, through really struggling with all sides of the issue. Really think about how the readings talk about
this. Do they all agree? How can you fit the ideas in the readings together for yourself.
You may find it helpful to follow the format that you used for the previous three essays. I have outlined it again
below. Even if you change things around a little, you still need to do every aspect of the reflective writing
process. I will be using the same grading criteria that I have for the previous essays. My hope in making this a little
more open ended is that you take the opportunity to get ready for writing these kinds of things without my help.
Part 1: Explanation –
In this section you provide an introduction to the main theme of the essay. You should discuss briefly the
concepts contained in the question and how the work in this class has helped you to think through these
things. If you can, refer to specific authors and their ideas.
Part 2: Exploration –
In this section you should honestly evaluate your own attitudes about diversity and where those attitudes
came from. Ask yourself questions about why you believe what you believe.
Part 3: Conjecture –
Ask yourself some question about the value of diversity. The point here is for you to ask a question that you
can try to answer in the next section of the paper. One thing that might help you come up with a good
conjecture is to think about this in terms of the theme of this section of the course.
Part 4: Analysis –
Explore your question and talk about how the readings helped you understand diversity more clearly. Take
your conjecture and really think it through, “out loud” so to speak. Refer to the authors and talk about what
you like and don’t like about what they had to say. This section is about looking for connections and
conflicts between your attitudes and life experiences and the ideas and suggestions proposed in the
readings.
Part 5: Synthesis/Re-examination –
Be honest. Pull things together and talk about what you have learned through the readings about your
relationship to diversity, how you think people should be treated and why.