Rationale:
At the beginning of the year, as a sort of benchmark and to be able to get know the students, I have the students write about their EDUCATIONAL PERSONALITY. After this has been graded and turned back to the students, students will take their papers and their life stories and compare to two famous individuals: Margaret Thatcher and Ghandi. This exercise will serve to get the students to start thinking of reading texts and comparing them, finding things in common and differences. This will also be the beginning of scaffolding of the end goal, being able to read, analyze and write about specific points using points of reference from the texts.
Learning Task #1
Question:
What do you, Margaret and Ghandi all have in common? Highlight the commonalities. Find the differences and underline them.
Learning Task #2
Using the information gathered, discuss with your neighbor how you compare and contrast with Margaret and Ghandi. Make a list of what you both discuss. Be prepared to share with the class, what common differences and similarities you and your partner share.
LEARNING TASK 3#:
Using the similarities and differences, write a paper. This will be due 9/17. It should have a rough draft, triangle notes and a box outline notes turned in with the paper, as well as a rough draft with editting marks on it. THIS WILL COUNT AS A TEST AND A PAPER….
Margaret Thatcher – Mini Biography
SYNOPSIS
Born on October 13, 1925, in Grantham, England, Margaret Thatcher became Britain’s Conservative Party leader and in 1979 was elected prime minister, the first woman to hold the position. During her three terms, she cut social welfare programs, reduced trade union power and privatized certain industries. Thatcher resigned in 1991 due to unpopular policy and power struggles in her party. She died on April 8, 2013, at age 87.
QUOTES– Margaret Thatcher
“One of the things being in politics has taught is that men are not a reasoned or reasonable sex.”
“In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman.”
“I don’t think there will be a woman prime minister in my lifetime.”
EARLY LIFE
Politician and former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher was born as Margaret Hilda Roberts on October 13, 1925, in Grantham, England. Nicknamed the “Iron Lady,” Thatcher served as the prime minister of England from 1979 to 1990. The daughter of a local businessman, she was educated at a local grammar school, Grantham Girls’ High School. Her family operated a grocery store and they all lived in an apartment above the store. In her early years, Thatcher was introduced to conservative politics by her father, who was a member of the town’s council.
A good student, Thatcher was accepted to Oxford University, where she studied chemistry at Somerville College. One of her instructors was the Dorothy Hodgkin, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist. Politically active in her youth, Thatcher served as president of the Conservative Association at the university. She earned a degree in chemistry in 1947, and went on to work as a research chemist in Colchester. Later, she worked as a research chemist in Dartford.
EARLY FORAY INTO POLITICS
Two years after graduating from college, Thatcher made her first bid for public office. She ran as the conservative candidate for a Dartford parliamentary seat in the 1950 elections. Thatcher knew from the start that it would be nearly impossible to win the position away from the liberal Labour Party. Still she earned the respect of her political party peers with her speeches. Defeated, Thatcher remained undaunted, trying again the following year, but once more her efforts were unsuccessful. Two months after her loss, she married Denis Thatcher.
In 1952, Thatcher put politics aside for a time to study law. She and her husband welcomed twins Carol and Mark the next year. After completing her training, Thatcher qualified as a barrister, a type of lawyer, in 1953. But she didn’t stay away from the political arena for too long. Thatcher won a seat in the House of Commons in 1959, representing Finchley.
Clearly a woman on the rise, Thatcher was appointed parliamentary under secretary for pensions and national insurance in 1961. When the Labour Party assumed control of the government, she became a member of what is called the Shadow Cabinet, a group of political leaders who would hold Cabinet-level posts if their party was in power.
BRITAIN’S FIRST FEMALE PREMIER
When Conservatives returned to office in June 1970, Thatcher was appointed secretary of state for education and science, and dubbed “Thatcher, milk snatcher,” after her abolition of the universal free school milk scheme. She found her position frustrating, not because of all the bad press around her actions, but because she had difficulty getting Prime Minister Edward Heath to listen to her ideas.
Biography of M.K. Gandhi
PART ONE
A Child Groom
The word Mahatma means great soul. This name was not given Gandhi at birth by his parents, but many years later by the Indian people when they discovered they had a Mahatma in their midst.
Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869, in Porbandar, a small state in western India. He was named Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. The word Gandhi means grocer, and generations earlier that had been the family occupation. But Gandhi’s grandfather, father, and uncle had served as prime ministers to the princes of Porbandar and other tiny Indian states, and though lower caste, the Gandhis were middle-class, cultured, and deeply religious Hindus.
Gandhi remembered his father as truthful, brave, incorruptible, and short-tempered, but he remembered his mother as a saint. She often fasted for long periods, and once, during the four months of the rainy season, ate only on the rare days that the sun shone.
At the age of six Gandhi went to school in Porbandar and had difficulty learning to multiply. The following year his family moved to Rajkot where he remained a mediocre student, so sensitive that he ran home from school for fear the other boys might make fun of him.
When Gandhi was thirteen, he was married to Kasturbai, a girl of the same age. Child marriages, arranged by the parents, were then common in India, and since Hindu weddings were elegant, expensive affairs, the Gandhi family decided to marry off Gandhi, his older brother, and a cousin all at one time to spare the cost of three separate celebrations.
At first the thirteen-year-old couple were almost too shy to speak to each other, but Gandhi soon became bossy and jealous. Kasturbai could not even play with her friends without his permission and often he would refuse it. But she was not easily cowed, and when she disobeyed him the two children would quarrel and not talk for days. Yet while Gandhi was desperately trying to assert his authority as a husband he remained a boy, so afraid of the dark that he had to sleep with a light on in his room though he was ashamed to explain this to Kasturbai.
The young bridegroom was still in high school, where his scholarship had improved, and he won several small prizes. Indian independence was the dream of every student, and a Moslem friend convinced Gandhi that the British were able to rule India only because they ate meat and the Hindus did not. In meat lay strength and in strength lay freedom.
Gandhi’s family was sternly vegetarian, but the boy’s patriotism vanquished his scruples. One day, in a hidden place by a river, his friend gave him some cooked goat’s meat. To Gandhi it tasted like leather and he immediately became ill. That night he dreamed a live goat was bleating in his stomach, but he ate meat another half-dozen times, until he decided it was not worth the sin of lying to his parents. After they died, he thought, he would turn carnivorous and build up the strength to fight for freedom. Actually, he never ate meat again, and freed India with a strength that was moral rather than physical.
But Gandhi was still a rebellious teenager, and once, when he needed money, stole a bit of gold from his brother’s jewelry. The crime haunted him so that he finally confessed to his father, expecting him to be angry and violent. Instead the old man wept.
“Those pearl drops of love cleansed my heart,” Gandhi later wrote, “and washed my sin away.” It was his first insight into the impressive psychological power of ahimsa, or nonviolence.
Gandhi was sixteen when his father died. Two years later the youth graduated from high school and enrolled in a small Indian college. But he disliked it and returned home after one term.
A friend of the family then advised him to go to England where he could earn a law degree in three years and equip himself for eventual succession to his father’s post as prime minister. Though he would have preferred to study medicine, the idea of going to England excited Gandhi. After he vowed he would not touch liquor, meat, or women, his mother gave him her blessing and his brother gave him the money.
Leaving his wife and their infant son with his family in Rajkot, he went to Bombay. There he purchased some English-style clothing and sailed for England on September 4, 1888, just one month short of his nineteenth birthday.
This biography was written by Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht and is reprinted here with the permission of the copyright holder.