While often jocose and occasionally hyperbolic, Hunter Maats and Katie O’Brien make many research-supported points in The Straight-A Conspiracy. Foundational to the rest is “[t]he idea that [a person has] to be ‘born smart’ . . . is the [w]orst [i]dea [e]ver” (Maats and O’Brien 15). You will write an MLA formatted essay that refutes or supports this assertion, correctly incorporates in-text/parenthetical citations, and is between 750-1250 (3-5 pages, excluding your necessary Works Cited page). Your essay MUST incorporate at least two of the following three primary sources in support of your thesis:

Plato’s Republic (Book VI’s section on epistemology and/or Book VII’s section on education),
Plato’s Meno
Stephen Jay Gould’s “The Monster’s Human Nature”
Further, you can use any other sources (e.g., books, articles, podcasts, documentaries, videos, etc.) that you but all sources must be correctly cited.

Develop and present a clear and cogent thesis statement1 of your own on the topic of people’s not being born smart that is as limited and direct as possible yet still broad enough to incorporate the minimum two primary sources you must cite (as well as any others sources you choose to incorporate).

Sample Solution

Write a 1,200-1,500-word essay describing the electronic health records incentive programs, also known as meaningful use. It offers financial incentives and was designed to improve quality, safety, and efficiency of care through the use of electronic health records.

1. Describe the three stages of meaningful use and their measures.
2. Explain the challenges and barriers faced by facilities in implementing each stage of meaningful use.

Sample Solution

Rather than living in chaos, danger, and the hostility of our neighbors, we find ways to live together. It isn’t easy, but can we avoid doing so?

If everybody has self-interest in their own welfare and safety, then everybody also has self-interest in the welfare and safety of others. Self-interest involves community interest, and we must think about what we are willing to give up in order to get that safety and stability for ourselves, our families, our community, our nation, and even the world.

Thomas Hobbes and John Locke are just two examples of social contract moralists. Locke’s philosophy helped Thomas Jefferson formulate the United States Declaration of Independence. We are interested in what it means to live together in an orderly way under a social contract.

Initial Post Instructions
For the initial post, address one of the following sets of questions:

What is a time when you or someone you know of experienced a conflict between duty to self and loyalty to the community? What would logical reasoning say should be done in that case? Why that? What would an Ethical Egoist say to do? Why would they say to do that? Note what you feel is the best course of action.
What is a time when you or someone you know experienced a clash between professional duties and familial duties? Reference a professional code such as that of the American Nurses Association or American Bar Association in explaining the clash. What moral values should have been used in that case? Why those values? What would social contract ethics have said to have done? Why would social contract ethics say that? Note what you feel is the best course of action.
Articulate and evaluate a time when you or someone you know saw personal obligations collide with national obligations. How did that tension involve differing positions on a moral debate? Did those positions rely on any key moral theories? If so, how so? If not, why not? Note what you feel is the best course of action.

Sample Solution