Twelfth Grade · History · week 36

Capstone: argue an economic policy

Research a live policy question and argue it in writing with mechanisms, evidence, and a steelmanned opposition.

Eighteen weeks of tools become one piece of citizenship. Choose a live policy question with real stakes: raise the local minimum wage? Rent control downtown? A tariff on imported solar panels? Universal free community college? Your job is not to have an opinion — you had those for free before this course. Your job is an ARGUMENT: claim, mechanism, evidence, and an honest reckoning with the other side.

Structure: (1) the question and who's affected; (2) your claim; (3) the economic mechanism — walk it through supply/demand, incentives, opportunity cost, the tools by name; (4) evidence — at least three sources, at least one that cuts AGAINST you; (5) the steelman — the opposition's best case argued so well they'd nod, and your response to it; (6) what you'd watch after enactment to know if you were wrong. That last section is what separates thinkers from talkers.

📋 For the grown-up teacher
Teach it (10–15 min):
  • Let them own the topic choice; veto only questions with no live disagreement (nothing to argue).
  • Enforce the steelman standard ruthlessly — it's the course's character-building payload.
  • Read the draft as a skeptic, not a proofreader: attack the mechanism chain first, the commas last.
  • Stage a finale: they present for 10 minutes, you argue the other side seriously, then log it to records — this is the transcript artifact.
Talk about it:
  • Did the evidence move you anywhere you didn't expect?
  • Could you now argue the other side for a grade?
  • What would you watch over five years to score your own prediction?

Mastery looks like: A finished essay/presentation with named mechanisms, honest sources, a genuine steelman, and a falsifier.

Common stumbles: Opinion with citations instead of argument with mechanisms; strawmanning; treating the assignment as settled once submitted.

Homework for this lessonType it, write it with a stylus, or print it for pencil & paper.open →
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