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5 Changing the World
Continuing the Conversation

Throughout this chapter, you have been reading texts and thinking about how people
create change in the world. At the beginning of the chapter and after each of the
readings, you had opportunities to consider ideas related to the following essential
questions:

ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS

• What are the conditions required to make change happen?

• How does one gain the appropriate amount and type of power to create change?

• How does effective, persuasive communication help to bring about change?
• When — if ever — is violence an appropriate means for creating change?

The sections that follow will give you an opportunity to revisit and respond to some of
those questions as you think further about creating change by connecting these ideas
to yourself, to texts you’ve read, and to the world outside of the classroom.

Connection to Self

Think back on the texts you have read, responses you have written, discussions you
have participated in, and ideas you have considered during your work with this chapter.
Use these questions to help explore how the issues in this chapter connect to your life
and experience.
1. What is a change that you would like to see at your school or town? How might you
make that change happen?
2. What power do you have, personally, to bring about meaningful change in your
school or your town?
3. Explain how your personal, academic, social, and other skills might help you bring
about a desired change.
4. How do you tend to act when you talk with someone whose position on a topic is
different from your own? How do you try to convince that person of your position?
5. Which of the authors in this chapter would you like to have dinner with? Why? What
questions would you ask about that author’s choices and advocacy for change? Or,
which author would you definitely not want to have dinner with? Why? If you were
stuck next to that author at dinner, what questions would you ask?
6. Which of the texts in this chapter had the most significant effect on the way you
think about change? Why?

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