Assignment

Option 1

What is the Status of the American Family?

Do not forget to adhere to the basic extra credit instructions posted separately on Canvas. Here is the article citation:

Coontz, S. (1999, November). The American Family. Life, Vol. 22, pp. 79-82.

Here is the link to the article on the author's website (accessing it through the OUS library is temporarily not an option):

The abstract for the article reads as follows:

"Discusses the similarities in family life and social problems in the United States in the beginning of the 20th century through November 1999. Improvements regarding childhood mortality, education, child labor, and women's rights; Why the 1950s are regarded so highly in history as a standard for family values despite the actual poverty rate, women's oppression and race relation problems."

Stephanie Coontz is a family historian at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. In the family field, she is most well known for her book, The Way We Never Were: American Families & The Nostalgia Trap published in 1992.

For this extra credit assignment, I want you to answer the following questions:

• According to Coontz, why are families better off now than they were 100 years ago?
• Why does Coontz think that, as a society, we long for a return to the 1950's?
• Do you think our society could, in fact, return to the families of the 1950's? Why or why not?
• Do you think as a nation, we would be better off if we did return to the families of the1950's? Why or why not?

Option 2

Play the Spent game

From Wikipedia: "SPENT is an online game where players must make the difficult decisions necessary to live for one month on $1,000, often having to choose between equally disagreeable options. Do you make a healthy meal or keep the lights on? Cover the minimum on your credit cards or pay the rent? Hope your sick daughter gets better on her own or risk your job by leaving early to take her to the doctor? Let your son play in the after-school sports league or save the money needed for his uniform? The game ends when players either run out of money before the end of the month or make it through with money left over."

Do not forget to adhere to the basic extra credit instructions posted on Canvas. Answer the following questions:

• Play at least one round of the online game SPENT.

• Report your experience playing the game. Provide a step by step description starting with "finding a job". Be sure to be as detailed as possible while keeping within the word limit guidelines of 350-700 words. This part could be bulleted or numbered if that helps reduce the number of words used.

• What are your reactions to the game?

• Do you think it is realistic? Why or why not?

• How do you think you would fare if put in that situation?

Instruction

Select one of the options. Select only one option. If you submit two extra credit assignments, you will only get credit for one. The three different deadlines listed above are to encourage students to submit early - they are not to allow students to submit more than one option or to re-submit one option for a higher score.

Complete the requirements as indicated for the particular option you selected.

Number your responses to the questions and make the answer to each question a separate paragraph. It makes grading easier.

DO NOT include any introductory information such as your name, your ID#, the date, the course name or number, or the name of the option you selected.

DO NOT include the instructions/questions listed for the assignment in your write-up. Those words will NOT be counted as part of the word length requirement. After all, those are not your words.

Check to be sure your word length is between 350 and 700 words. A paper that is too long is just as bad as one that is too short, so please keep within these guidelines. This is a requirement that I will be checking. Papers that are too long usually have too much information and the writer has trouble getting to the point.

Run a spell and grammar check. This may seem obvious, but please use complete sentences. You will lose points for spelling/grammar/mechanical errors as well as incomplete or run-on sentences as those things make the responses very difficult to read.

Save your document as one of the following two file types only (Canvas will not allow you to submit any other file type):

A Microsoft Word document created on a newer version of MSWord - .docx

A Rich Text Format document - .rtf.