Last Updated on October 15, 2019 by Karl Thompson
For teachers, ‘teaching to a question’ is often the most efficient way of organizing a lesson, and it’s something I found especially useful when I first began my teaching career, 146 years ago.
In this post all I’m doing is re-visiting this basic strategy in preparation for teaching the next block of theories of crime and deviance, and simply asking myself what are the best ‘starting point’ questions to get students thinking along the line of Marxists, Interactionists and Realists….
Any of these questions can be used as useful starters… as kind of ‘what do you already know’ starter if you like. You could always add in a brief data response task to each block of questions to bring them to life a bit more.
Marxist theories of crime – four basic questions
- Does Capitalism cause crime?
- Do the police disproportionately target the working classes?
- Are elites more likely to escape prosecution by the courts than the working classes?
- Do Corporations cause more harm to people, society and the planet than ‘actual’ criminals?
Interactionist theories of crime – four basic questions
- Do teachers/ the police label students/ people based on their class, gender and ethnicity?
- Does this create a self-fulfilling prophecy?
- Are teachers/ the police to blame for the deviance of their students/ the crimes of criminals?
Right Realist theories of crime – to tap into rational choice theory…..
- Really simple..brainstorm anything the government might do to reduce crime in society (prize for the most solutions)
- Any series of questions relating to ‘Rational Choice Theory’ (future post on this) – e.g. here’s a scenario, such as it being late at night, no guards, no ticket barrier, would you bunk the train…
- All things being equal, do you think harsher punishments generally reduce crime?
- All things being equal do you think more police on the streets is an effective way to reduce crime?
NB – the questions above aren’t supposed to be exhaustive, just the simpler ones to kick start the topics.
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