Post-Discussion Writing on Concerning the Division of Labor

Below are the post-discussion questions for Concerning the Division of Labor. Before you begin to write, let me quote from our teacher's guide:

Having students write essays based on interpretive or evaluative questions related to the selection they have discussed enables them to assimilate new ideas and measure them against their own experience and opinions. Such writing can be an opportunity to return to questions not fully resolved in discussion, or to investigate unexplored avenues of inquiry. It is also a satisfying closure for students to articulate their own points of view carefully and thoroughly in written form.

In the Great Books program, writing is a natural extension of interpretive work on a selection. During the week's work with a text, students experience and important part of the writing process as they continually formulate, revise, and refine their ideas, draw inferences and reasoned conclusions, and order their thoughts. Having done so, they will be better prepared to present a thesis clearly and forcefully, and to develop a significant contest for their ideas - when they write. In their final essays, students should explain the importance of the ideas they are developing, support their points with convincing arguments and evidence from the text, and consider other possible points of view - all important elements of effective writing, and of shared inquiry as well.

1. do you agree with Smith that habit, custom, and education account for almost all the differences in people's talents?

2. Is it irrational to act in a manner that does not promote self-interest?

3. How could the division of labor promote or discourage creativity and individuality?

4. What problems does the division of labor cause in our society?

5. Should a basketball player and a construction worker be paid the same amount if they work equally hard?

6. How does the division of labor operate in your school or family? How could you improve the efficiency of your school or family by increasing (or decreasing) the division of labor?