Our critical thinking assignments this semester have all dealt with social contract

 Our critical thinking assignments this semester have all dealt with social contract

Paper #4 – Social Contract

Subject: Our critical thinking assignments this semester have all dealt with social contract (the concept that authority is given to a group or individual inside a society for a moral obligation or implied goal). Every day, individuals deal with a variety of forms of social contract at home, at work, at school, and in society. For this assignment, pick a form of social contract that you think is currently broken in contemporary American society and that, if it isn’t addressed soon, could possibly bring down the American society. Explain why you feel the form of social contract is failing and why it is important for society to take action. You can propose steps for solving the problem in your conclusion, but the goal of this assignment is to identify an important aspect of social contract that jeopardizes the integrity of American society and explain why this is such a dire threat. You CANNOT use the forms of social contract we have already covered in class:

Lack of oversight of prescription drug use (government and industry)

Current racial and religious tensions between minorities and majority population (government)

American government’s failure to help impoverished areas of the country (government and industry)

Identity theft (industry and government)

Also, you CANNOT use a topic you’ve previously discussed in another paper in this class.

Sources of information: Minimum three sources required – academic sources must be used (no Wikipedia or dubious websites). When using sources in papers (whether summary, paraphrase, or direct quote), you must cite the sources using in-text citation AND a works cited page. Not doing so will be considered plagiarism and an automatic F on the paper.

Purpose: The purpose of this essay is to persuade an audience that your choice of social contract failure is a dire issue to the future of America. Questions that you must address in your paper are:

What is the broken social contract?

Who are the groups / parties involved in the broken social contract?

What is the historical context for the broken social contract?

What would things be like of the social contract you are exploring wasn’t broken?

Why your selection of broken social contract threatens American society more than any other current issue.

Audience: Your audience is an academic audience. While that includes your peers (classmates) and your instructor, there are other expectations an academic audience has of a college level paper.

Length and document style: The minimum length requirement for this paper is 4 pages. Maximum length of this paper is 8 pages. Going over or under length requirement will result in a grade penalty of ten points. You will use MLA format for this paper. The required works cited page does not count towards your page count.