Introducing Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

HW: read Michael Schwalbe's Sociological Mindfulness.


Pre-reading questions:

What do you know about the death penalty?

What are the strengths of the U.S. justice system?

What are the challenges of the U.S. justice system?

Do you think that the U.S. should use capital punishment?

About the book: 

A powerful true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion call to fix our broken system of justice—from one of the most brilliant and influential lawyers of our time.

Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. One of his first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young man who was sentenced to die for a notorious murder he insisted he didn’t commit. The case drew Bryan into a tangle of conspiracy, political machinations, and legal brinksmanship—and transformed his understanding of mercy and justice forever.

 

JUST MERCY is at once an unforgettable account of an idealistic, gifted young lawyer’s coming of age, a moving window into the lives of those he has defended, and an inspiring argument for compassion in the pursuit of justice.

For more info:  http://bryanstevenson.com/

For sociology class:

As you read, look for connections to sociology.  Annotate the book based on the guide below.  Just Mercy is a true story and thus serves as a real-world example to which sociology concepts can be applied.  You will be required to apply the sociology concepts in class to the stories in the book.

Alignment to sociology by unit:

Unit 1: Thinking Sociologically

            Introduction: Higher Ground

            Chapter 1: Mockingbird Players

                                    Meeting Walter McMillan

            Chapter 2: Stand

                                    The dynamics of criminal justice.

Unit 2: Culture

            Chapter 3: Trials and Tribulations

                                    Walter’s Trial moved to a different county.

            Chapter 4: The Old Rugged Cross

                                    Story of Herbert Richardson; Veteran, mental illness & death penalty

Unit 3: Socialization

            Chapter 5: Of the Coming of John

                                    Walter’s trial has new testimony from Darnell Houston

            Chapter 6: Surely Doomed

                                    Charlie on trial 14yrs old

            Chapter 12: Mother, Mother

Chapter 14: Cruel and Unusual

           

Unit 4: Race

            Chapter 7:  Justice Denied

                        Ralph Myers recants his testimony about Walter.

            Chapter 9: I’m Here

           

Chapter 10: Mitigation

Unit 5: Deviance and Social Class

Chapter 8: All God’s Children

                        Trina, Ian and kids

           

Chapter 11: I’ll Fly Away

            Chapter 13: Recovery

            Chapter 15: Broken

            Chapter 16: The Stonecatchers Song of Sorrow

            Epilogue

-->

            Postscript

Applying three perspectives to the real world of college

Once you have created examples of the three paradigms in sports,  try looking at the readings below and deciding which reading is best suited for which paradigm and why.  You do not need to read the whole article; try to just read the abstract or introduction.  Each of the three readings is related to college.  On the back of your handout, number 1-3 and answer the following questions for each reading.
A few notes about the paradigms:
These paradigms are not mutually exclusive and sociologists don't necessarily subscribe to one paradigm at the expense of others.
These readings below are primary sources (sociological studies published in academic journals.)  You do not need to read the whole article to answer these questions.  Try to just read the abstract and page 1.

For the answers, focus on what the subject of the research was, NOT what the research concluded.

Reading 1:  by Lori Diane Hill

Which paradigm did the researcher seem to approach this study with?  Support your answer with an explanation of why.

Reading 2:  by Su Jin Jez

Which paradigm did the researcher seem to approach this study with?  Support your answer with an explanation of why.

Reading 3:  by Scott M. Myers and Carrie B. Myers

Which paradigm did the researcher seem to approach this study with?  Support your answer with an explanation of why.

Answer #4

When you finish, choose one of the readings to read it in more detail.  Is it interesting?  What conclusion did the researchers come to?  How did the researchers come to this conclusion?


HW:  Please read the excerpt from Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (packet pages 27-29)

Real World Sociology: Text and Applications

Today I want to be sure that you can access our textbook, The Real World, and then I want you to apply the sociological paradigms to the real world.

First, be sure you can download the textbook using these steps:

Our class has a digital textbook by Ferris and Stein called Real World Sociology from W.W. Norton.

To access it, go to the following link and follow the instructions below:

https://digital.wwnorton.com/realworld6hs

To login, click on the "sign in" button in the top right corner.

Select "Yes, I want to sign in"

Enter your full SHS email address

Your password should be your SHS password.

(If that does not work, try your old pass word that starts with Shs with six number after it not related to your SHS ID numbers.  If this does not work, then reset your password using the Forgot Password button.)

Once signed in, you will see the cover of the eBook.

Now select "EBook" button on the bottom row.

Now you can navigate through the eBook.

Please notice the other resources on the right menu bar on my blog, especially the "Quicklinks" menu.

After you have accessed the Real World, let's apply the three paradigms to the real world.

Applying the paradigms to the real world.

First, consider sports in the United States.  How can sports be viewed from each of the three paradigms?

Once you have answered this, please click here to analyze sociological readings related to college.

Scene on Radio - Men

http://www.sceneonradio.org/men/

Scene on Radio is a podcast that tells stories exploring human experience and American society. Produced and hosted by John Biewen, Scene on Radio comes from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University (CDS) and is distributed by PRX.  In Season 3, MEN, Biewen and co-host Celeste Headlee delve into sexism/patriarchy/misogyny and what we can do about it.

Scene on Radio Ain’t No Amoeba (MEN, Part 2): Transcript http://www.sceneonradio.org/episode-48-aint-no-amoeba-men-part-2/ [Music] Celeste Headlee: The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

High School Student Dropout data

Drop out Data for High School students
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/dropout/index.asp

Changing the dating norms/hookup culture of college

From Contexts, here: https://contexts.org/articles/love-me-tinder-love-me-sweet/

love me tinder, love me sweet

by Jennifer Hickes Lundquist and Celeste Vaughan Curington | December 11, 2019 | Fall 2019

Are “hookup” apps leading, ironically, to a revival of dating culture on college campuses? In our forthcoming book with Ken-Hou Lin on online dating, Through a Screen Darkly: American Interracial Intimacy Then and Now, we find that dating apps are providing a way to bypass the romantic gatekeeping that campus party culture has long dominated. Many students are now leveraging these apps to circumvent the worst of the college hookup scene. Yet, online platforms also introduce new challenges. Women and racial and ethnic minorities, in particular, resent how the disinhibitory effect of cyber-communications can expose them to a wide range of racialized and sexist online interactions. However, dating apps give these students greater control over partner choice empowering them to set the context of a first meeting, which is a unique advantage of online dating that tempers the negatives for many of those we interviewed. Despite their drawbacks, these new technologies have the potential to make college intimacy not only safer but also more fulfilling for a larger cross-section of students than traditional hookup culture.

Outliers...Success and the Sociological Imagination

Applying Sociology:  The Sociological Imagination and Outliers


Please read the intro from Outliers.

When you are finished, try to answer:

1. Describe life in Roseto.
2. What did Dr. Wolf set out to study originally?
3. What did he find instead?
4. Were the people aware of these effects? Explain.


In the book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell uses a sociological imagination to understand extreme success stories (aka Outliers). Using the introduction to understand sociology we see a few important ideas.
First, sociologists study how people are affected by their social groups. People are influenced by the groups they are a part of, whether it is family, a church, a town, etc. This often contradicts the idea that people are the sum total of their own individual genes and decisions. An important sociologist, C Wright Mills, calls this having a sociological imagination.   The "sociological imagination" is an important theme throughout our semester. The idea of the sociological imagination was developed by C. Wright Mills who said that having a sociological imagination helps one to see the connection between history and biography. That is, who we are (our biography) is determined by where and when we live (history).

Second, we see that sociologists do not simply make opinions or philosophical ideas, rather they make claims based on research and data.

Lastly, understanding sociology can change how we think about the world and who we are. For example, in this excerpt, one might change how he thinks about good health.

Do you see how the excerpt highlights these three ideas? 

The rest of Gladwell's book uses a sociological imagination to explain extreme success stories. For example, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs tremendous success and wealth stemming from the development of computers:

Gladwell describes how being born in the mid 1950s was particularly fortuitous for those interested in computer programming development (think Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, both born in 1955). It also helped to be geographically near what were then called supercomputers, the gigantic predecessors to the thing on which you’re reading this post. Back in the 1960s, when Gates and Jobs were coming of age, a supercomputer took up a whole room and was not something most youngsters would have had a chance to see, let alone work on. But because of their proximity to actual computers, both Gates and Jobs had a leg up on others their age and had the chance to spend hours and hours (10,000 of them in Gladwell’s estimation) learning about programming.

We can apply this model to more than just financial success. Think about what opportunities your own biography and history have afforded you. How has when, where, and to whom you were born shaped your life today?

The Outliers reading provides an example of how the people of Roseto were affected by where and when they live. Because they lived in the town of Roseto at that time, they lived in a way that affected them (without even knowing it) so that they had a much lower chance of getting heart disease and living longer than the rest of the country. 

Learning Strategies

From the Chronicle of Higher Ed:

‘Sneaky Learning’

Students come to college armed with some really misguided ideas on how to study. Cramming before an exam is a classic one. So is rereading the same passage over and over in hopes of understanding what it means. But what’s the best way to get them to think differently and study more successfully? 

Colorado State University has been experimenting with the role that science and technology can play in breaking those bad habits. Anne M. Cleary, a psychology professor who studies human memory, has helped develop a number of these efforts, including the creation of a course called “The Science of Learning,” which is open to all undergraduates. The primary message, says Cleary, is don’t trust your gut. Learning is not intuitive. Research shows a disconnect between what people think are the best ways to learn and the habits that actually lead to true understanding and retention.

“Those strategies that are most effective may feel least effective,” she says. “Part of the goal is to help them appreciate science as a valuable source of information.”

To that end, students study the research behind different learning strategies. Take cramming, for example. Students learn that, while people estimate they learn better studying all at once versus spacing out their learning, studies show the opposite. Similarly, people perform better when they test themselves on what they know while they are studying, as opposed to reading the same material over and over. 

Students are encouraged to put these strategies into practice in their other classes as they take the course, which has been open to all students since 2015. Cleary says one particular comment from a student perfectly encapsulates its approach: “I’ve been implementing these techniques & it doesn’t feel like it is going to have any effect,” the student wrote. “Then I take a quiz or a test & realize how much I’ve learned, & it’s almost like the learning just sneaks up on you. It’s like, I would call it, sneaky learning.”

Cleary loves that phrase: sneaky learning. So far, she says, the course has been successful. Evaluations show that undergraduates come away with a much better understanding of what works. “Where we still struggle is implementing the strategies,” she says. “Knowing is half the battle.” 

Students may intend to space their studying out over several days, for example, but find themselves cramming yet again for a big exam because they have trouble juggling their schedules. 

That’s where the second leg of her strategy comes in: technology. She and her colleagues are experimenting with a program that, when fed relevant questions, can ping students at random times throughout the week. While watching Netflix one night, for example, a student may see a question pop up on her smartwatch: How many plates make up the earth’s crust? A minute later, the answer appears. 

The strategy builds on the idea that “downhill changes,” as Cleary calls them — those that can be easily incorporated into your life — are more likely to stick than major changes in behavior. It also uses the concept of nudges, popularized by the legal scholar Cass Sunstein, which holds that you can prompt positive changes in behavior through small incentives.

Of course the investment needed to make this work on a large scale is considerable. After testing out the technology on a dozen people with good results, her team is now working with the campus Center for the Analytics of Learning and Teaching to scale up the experiment to an entire course.

Other experiments include a one-credit recitation session for a biomedical-science course, in which instructors give students exercises tailored to the class — like having them write a letter to their grandmother explaining a concept they learned that week. Cleary has also brought her message to a campuswide initiative called the First Four Weeks, a workshop in which faculty members who run large-enrollment, first-year courses are taught about the science of learning, among other things. 

Her goal, ultimately, is to develop enough venues for this work so that all students and instructors will have exposure to practical applications of the science of learning. She’d love to see the “Science of Learning” class offered to every first-year student, for example. “I mentioned this idea to administrators, and always get an enthusiastic response,” she says, noting that the course wouldn’t have been possible without support from the provost’s office. “But pushing things through is a whole other challenge.”

In January, Oxford University Press is releasing a book written by Cleary and her colleagues Matthew G. Rhodes and Edward L. DeLosh. It’s called A Guide to Effective Studying and Learning: Practical Strategies From the Science of Learning, and is based on their work to date.

Research Project Overview

-->

Research Project Step by Step Overview

I.  Introduction. 
Expectations include:

• Explain what you are attempting to study and why.
• Explain your research in the form of a question.
• Explain how the topic connects to sociology (1b)

1a. Identify what you’d like to study.  Brainstorm topic ideas.  What topics are you interested in?  Can you frame your interest into the form of a question?  Why are you interested in this topic?  Were you inspired by research that we read in class or some other source or something from your own life?   Brainstorm ideas.

1b. Focus the topic sociologically:   What group/people are you attempting to study?  Are you interested in studying how this creates and reinforces social norms and stability?  Are you interested in how this creates social inequality?  Are you interested in how this creates meaning between people – either values, norms, etc.? 

II.  Literature review.   
Expectations for your literature review include:

• Citing sociological sources
• Consulting several sources
• Explaining the distinct claims that the authors make 

In order to exceeding expectations, students should structure the literature review around different concepts/ideas by writing about an idea and then explaining how various sources connect to the idea  (This is as opposed to structuring the literature review around the sources and simply writing about each source and the ideas in it).

2a. Key terms/words/phrases.

Make a list of search terms for your topic. 

2b. Search the terms

Methodically research what has been published about your topic already. Keep track of which search terms reveal which results.  This is a gathering info phase - you should not be spending too much time reading articles yet.

    

1.  Also use the “The Society Pages,” a website of sociology resources, especially Discoveries page, and on the Contexts page, the In Brief section.

2.  Use academic sociology journal articles.  The SHS ILC database JSTOR will be especially helpful here.JSTOR, an online database that you can search by subject. Go to the SHS Library online where you can login to JSTOR under "Academic Journals". Click here to go directly to JSTOR Advanced search. Once you are logged on, scroll down to select "sociology" then search any subject you would like.

3.  Google search “sociology” and the relevant terms.  Carefully select sources from here based on the source info.

Make a list of the sources that seem relevant which you find with each set of search terms.

2c.  Review the Literature

Once you have gathered the research that is available, read through the most relevant sources.  Note the citation information for each relevant article you study. You should add each article to a bibliography and annotate/summarize these articles.  What does the source say about your topic? 

2d.  Write your literature review. 

In your research project, you should make sense of the background research you find.  You might want to start with an outline that organizes what you found.  How does the research fit together?  What story does the research tell?  What information is left out of the previous literature?

III.  Conclusion or Hypothesis 
Expectations include:
Having a thorough conclusion or hypothesis that addresses your original question(I) in light of the research you find in your background literature review (II).

After making sense of the literature review, write either a conclusion or hypothesis about what the answer to your original question is.  Your conclusion or hypothesis should include operational definitions.  What exactly was the conclusion?  What exactly did the research study?  For example, if you are studying "violence" in the "media", how did the researchers define "violence"?  What counts as violence?  What counts as media?  What was specifically studied?

3a.  Conclusion:  If you find research that answers your question, explain what what did you conclude?  Why?  And what sources were most helpful?

3b.  Hypothesis: If it is a hypothesis, include an explanation about what you think the answer to your question might be and how the research supports that, even if it is indirectly supporting it.

IV. Moving Forward: Propose Research, Do Research or Propose Policy Changes.

This last section should explain, based on your research, what to do next to understand your topic.  You can explain what research still should be done and why and how.  This can be considered a research proposal.  Basically, you are suggestion what research should be done next.   Second, you may actually conduct research using some of the accessible data on my blog page or even gather your own research through surveys or interviews or qualitative methods.  A third option for this section is proposing policy changes for addressing your topic.  What should be done by individuals or institutions to address the problem that your research studied.  

V.  Citations: Have a Bibliography (or footnotes if you prefer).
You should cite your research in your document.  Do not be afraid to cite other research.  This is the point of the literature review!  You can cite either within your writing or in parenthesis after the research you cite.  These citations might be either direct quotes or just ideas that are paraphrased.  Either way, you should be sure to cite these both.  Citations should include author and date within the paper and then in a bibliography at the end, include the whole citation.  There is an ASA format, but I don't mind if you use MLA or whatever you are familiar with, just be consistent.  Below is a picture of in-text citations and the bibliography page.

Here is an example of a literature review from one of my students.



Here is a second example.