Argumentative Essays - High School

How does human compassion inform our understanding of the world?

Empathy, the ability to understand and share the thoughts and feelings of others, is an important part of our humanity. How do we best express empathy? How does showing and accepting compassion help inform our understanding of the world? These are the questions we considered during this unit,

Our class read and analyzed classic works of literature and powerful informational texts in which a wide variety of human experiences demonstrated the importance of developing compassion for others.

helps students showcase their knowledge through a well-constructed argumentative essay. Drawing from the readings in this unit and any further research, students made a claim about who in the unit best evoked compassion or empathy in an audience to inspire action or change, while bringing about a greater understanding of the world.

develop an argumentative essay expressing their own evidence-based ideas about empathy. In all, this unit offers students the opportunity to explore a question that is relevant to our times: How does human compassion inform our understanding of the world?