homework need in one hours
5 Geography of the Middle East
Guidelines for the critical thinking project/paper:
1. The critical thinking paper (about 2 to 3 single-spaced pages and 1200 to 1500 words) together with the formative assessment discussion board are worth 10 points (2 points for the formative assessment discussion board and 8 points for the essay, that is
10 percent of the final grade) and should be based exclusively on the specifically assigned PowerPoint slides of Topic 5.
2. The paper must be focused on thoughtful explanations and answers to the following specific critical thinking questions:
(a) what common goals unite geopolitical Axis 1 countries? (b) What common goals unite geopolitical Axis 2 countries?
(c) What common goals divide the two geopolitical axes? (d) To which extent one can consider the seven wars/conflicts
in Yemen, Libya, Iraq, Syria, Palestine-Israel, Lebanon, and Bahrain as simply ONE geopolitical war/conflict fought in
different geographies? (e) What dynamics and synergy seem to make each geopolitical axis a ‘whole’ that is greater than
the simple sum of its ‘parts’? You might begin your review of the assigned materials by skimming carefully through the following specific PowerPoint slides to identify specific examples illustrating the specific parties at war/conflict in Bahrain
(slides 281, 155), in Iraq (slides 3, 7, 79, 86, 90), in Lebanon (18, 126, 127, 294, 300), in Libya (slides 4, 140-142, 151, 162-
175, 332-333), in Palestine-Israel (slides 221-223, 284-287, 294, 319, 334-335, 157-161, 323), in Syria (slides 176-183, 250-
252, 275-280, 331, 357-358, 362-366), and in Yemen (slides 289-293, 299, 306, 327-328).
3. Your discussion and explanation should give examples that reflect your ability to integrate multiple perspectives/ways of learning through scientific and historical perspectives (such as learning from objective facts and figures as in PowerPoint slides
3, 12, 52-54, 145, 193, 219), learning through artistic and literary perspectives (such as learning from imagined representations
of facts as in PowerPoint slides 2, 26-29, 66, 94, 113, 166, 177, 188-190, 267, 278, 280) and learning through ethical and
behavioral perspectives (such as learning from irrational or emotional or moving social behaviors or situations as in PowerPoint
slides 61-64, 157-161, 169, 193, 199, 276-277, 279, 301).
4. To demonstrate some course-related ‘experiential learning’ (‘out-of-class-learning experience’), your paper should include a brief comparison of the Axis1-versus-Axis2 geopolitical explanation of major current issues in the news with other cultural,
religious, sectarian, psychological, or other persuasive explanations you have personally encountered and documented either
through your own ‘social media’ electronic communications with others worldwide or through your own face-to-face
interaction with any identifiable/verifiable ISU or Terre Haute community group or individual.
5. The paper must be formatted as a Microsoft Word file according to syllabus and blackboard guidelines and must be uploaded through the TurnItIn link to check for plagiarism.
6. The paper is important and must be completed and submitted by the deadline to avoid 0 points, in addition to a grade penalty of 5 points.
7. The paper should reflect independent and ORIGINAL writing and critical thinking and should be persuasive and well written.
8. The paper should be formatted carefully in accordance with the following detailed guidelines and instructions. It should consist of 1200 to 1500 words (about 2 to 3 single-spaced pages). There should be no cover page and no instructor’s name on the paper.
The paper should have four paragraphs per full page. There should be one space between paragraphs and no paragraph
indentation. Each page should have top/bottom and right/left margins of 0.8" and the text should be fully justified (aligned evenly along the left and right margins). It should have Times New Roman as the only base font. Each page should have your
full name and Indiana State University on two lines aligned with the margins and entered properly as left headers, and the course title and academic term or semester on two lines aligned with the margins and entered properly as right headers. The
point size of the headers should be 10, the title of the paper should be centered and should have bold appearance and a font
point size of 16, the rest of the text should have a font point size of 12 (except the footnotes whose font size should be 9). The
standardized format is designed to improve your writing presentation skills and to help the grader focus solely on the content
of the paper and not be distracted or influenced by the diversity of the format (since it should be the same format in all papers).
9. For your references, you should use ONLY footnotes (without bibliography or cited work) entered at the bottom of each page according to the Notes [NOT shortened Notes or Bibliography entries] system of The Chicago Manuel of Style Online at: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-1.html. Please keep in mind that the instructor is NOT
the author of the vast assigned material (books, book chapters, journal articles, articles in newspapers and popular magazines,
websites, PowerPoint slides, videos/video synopses, currents issues in the news stories…) cited in the PowerPoint slides or
elsewhere in Topic 5. If the source is a link in the PowerPoint slide, you need to access the source itself and provide a full
reference according the Chicago Manuel of Style. For example:
a. Zadie Smith, Swing Time (New York: Penguin Press, 2016), 315–16.
6 Geography of the Middle East
b. Susan Satterfield, “Livy and the Pax Deum,” Classical Philology 111, no. 2 (April 2016): 170. c. Farhad Manjoo, “Snap Makes a Bet on the Cultural Supremacy of the Camera,” New York Times, March 8, 2017,
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/08/technology/snap-makes-a-bet-on-the-cultural-supremacy-of-the-camera.html.
d. Sam Gomez, Facebook message to author, August 1, 2017. e. Hillary Clinton, “Hillary Clinton: We created Al-Qaeda,” YouTube video clip, Uploaded on December 27, 2011,
accessed December 31, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dqn0bm4E9yw, PowerPoint slide 226, Topic 5.
f. Benjamin Netanyahu, “America is a thing you can move very easily”, Naomi Zeveloff, "What Do Israelis Think About Americans? Start With Disdain," The Jewish Daily Forward, 3/8/2015, accessed 7 August 2017,
http://forward.com/articles/216074/what-do-israelis-think-about-americans-start-with/, PowerPoint slide 355, Topic 5.
g. Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway, "From U.S., the ABC's of Jihad," The Washington Post, March 23, 2002, accessed December 26, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2002/03/23/from-us-the-abcs-of-
jihad/d079075a-3ed3-4030-9a96-0d48f6355e54/, PowerPoint slide 226, Topic 5.
h. "The best way to help Israel deal with Iran's growing nuclear capability is to help the people of Syria overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad", Hillary Clinton Email Archive, UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F- 2014-20439 Doc No. C05794498 Date: 11/30/2015, accessed December 31, 2016, https://wikileaks.org/clinton-
emails/Clinton_Email_November_Release/C05794498.pdf, PowerPoint slide 183, Topic 5.
[Course] Universal Intellectual Standards:
“Universal intellectual standards are standards which must be applied to thinking whenever one is interested in checking the quality of
reasoning about a problem, issue, or situation. To think critically entails having command of these standards. To help students learn
them, teachers should pose questions which probe student thinking, questions which hold students accountable for their thinking,
questions which, through consistent use by the teacher in the classroom, become internalized by students as questions they need to ask
themselves. The ultimate goal, then, is for these questions to become infused in the thinking of students, forming part of their inner
voice, which then guides them to better and better reasoning. While there are a number of universal standards, the following are the most
significant:
Clarity: Could you elaborate further on that point? Could you express that point in another way? Could you give me an illustration?
Could you give me an example? Clarity is the gateway standard. If a statement is unclear, we cannot determine whether it is accurate or
relevant. In fact, we cannot tell anything about it because we don't yet know what it is saying. For example, the question, "What can be
done about the education system in America?" is unclear. In order to address the question adequately, we would need to have a clearer
understanding of what the person asking the question is considering the "problem" to be. A clearer question might be "What can
educators do to ensure that students learn the skills and abilities which help them function successfully on the job and in their daily
decision-making?"
Accuracy: Is that really true? How could we check that? How could we find out if that is true? A statement can be clear but not accurate,
as in "Most dogs are over 300 pounds in weight."
Precision: Could you give more details? Could you be more specific? A statement can be both clear and accurate, but not precise, as in
"Jack is overweight." (We don't know how overweight Jack is, one pound or 500 pounds.)
Relevance: How is that connected to the question? How does that bear on the issue? A statement can be clear, accurate, and precise, but
not relevant to the question at issue. For example, students often think that the amount of effort they put into a course should be used in
raising their grade in a course. Often, however, the "effort" does not measure the quality of student learning, and when this is so, effort
is irrelevant to their appropriate grade.
Depth: How does your answer address the complexities in the question? How are you taking into account the problems in the question?
Is that dealing with the most significant factors? A statement can be clear, accurate, precise, and relevant, but superficial (that is, lack
depth). For example, the statement "Just say No" which is often used to discourage children and teens from using drugs, is clear, accurate,
precise, and relevant. Nevertheless, it lacks depth because it treats an extremely complex issue, the pervasive problem of drug use among
young people, superficially. It fails to deal with the complexities of the issue.
Breadth: Do we need to consider another point of view? Is there another way to look at this question? What would this look like from
a conservative standpoint? What would this look like from the point of view of...? A line of reasoning may be clear accurate, precise,
relevant, and deep, but lack breadth (as in an argument from either the conservative or liberal standpoint which gets deeply into an issue,
but only recognizes the insights of one side of the question.)
Logic: Does this really make sense? Does that follow from what you said? How does that follow? But before you implied this and now
you are saying that; how can both be true? When we think, we bring a variety of thoughts together into some order. When the combination
of thoughts are [sic] mutually supporting and make sense in combination, the thinking is "logical." When the combination is not mutually
supporting, is contradictory in some sense, or does not "make sense," the combination is not logical.
Fairness: Do I have a vested interest in this issue? Am I sympathetically representing the viewpoints of others? Human think is often
biased in the direction of the thinker - in what are the perceived interests of the thinker. Humans do not naturally consider the rights and
needs of others on the same plane with their own rights and needs. We therefore must actively work to make sure we are applying the
intellectual standard of fairness to our thinking. Since we naturally see ourselves as fair even when we are unfair, this can be very
difficult. A commitment to fairmindedness is a starting place.” Source: R. Paul and L. Elder, Foundation For Critical Thinking, June
1996, http://www.criticalthinking.org/articles/universal-intellectual-standards.cfm