Jonathan Swift Lessons for the Classroom

I have revised the older version of this group work to include issues such as The New Yorker cover that came out in the summer of 2009 on the Obamas that created such a furious outcry and controversy.  It is always easy to laugh at satire, including Gulliver's Travels and "A Modest Proposal" but when it comes closer to our own lives - people are often offended instead of amused.  There are two handouts in addition to the main Group Work - that have two other controversial cases of satire -

Content: Students will formulate a utopia based on the instruction of student selected figures from history as an anticipatory exercise for reading the Glubbdubdrib section of Gulliver’s Travels Book 3.
Product:
1) Will create lists of as many great thinkers and great societies of past ages that they can.
2) Students will create notes based on the writings of civilizations and/ or thinkers from past eras as a basis for creating their framework for a utopia.
3) Students will create their own utopia using the attached guidelines.

Content: Interactive Lecture in which students view images, read texts, and connect them to the questions posed by the lecture.

Product: 1) Student produced notes on additional texts’ connection to events, characters,and images in Gulliver’s Travels.

2) Student produced exit slips answering the lessons essential questions:

What image has Swift’s presented through the mirror his satire has held up to us? What is Swift’s view of humanity? Does he have one? What view of humanity are you left with through your exploration of Gulliver’s Travels?

Summary: This lesson is designed to introduce students to the tools of satire. Students will look at both visual and written examples of satirical work, including a Saturday Night Live sketch and an article from The Onion. The lesson involved a guided discussion of the satirical elements in these pieces, direction instruction on the tools of satire, a reading of Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal." Students will work together to identify elements of satire in Swift's essay.  Then they will write an original piece in pairs that satirizes a school policy or procedure.

In this lesson, students are asked to analyze both "A Modest Proposal" and a modern work of satire (a blog entry from Jon Swift's blog) for the persuasive techniques used by both authors. You may choose to use the provided guided worksheet or not.  After fully reading/discussing both pieces, students will either write their own ironic "modern proposal" to a problem that they see or they will create a video outlining their proposal. Students could work alone or with a partner. If they worked alone, they turned in a written proposal.