Unit Overview:

This unity will carry on from the previous units on democracy and politics to understand the causes and impact of authoritarian governments. Students will watch documentaries, read current events, carry out discussions, research, and develop group presentations to demonstrate their understanding of the effects of dictatorship around the world.

 

Personal Unit Overview: What did you achieve this unit?

In this unit, I’ve learned more about authoritarianism and how it is formed in different places. We specifically learned about dictatorship, a type of authoritarian governments, by watching documentaries about dictators such as Idi Amin, Gaddafi, and Stalin. By studying their histories, I’ve noticed some common attributes that they all have: greed for wealth and power, and some sort of mental or background issues.

 

Enduring Understandings:

• Why do authoritarian governments exist?

  • Authoritarian governments usually emerge from a country’s crisis, in which they tend to easily appeal to vulnerable citizens, in desperate need of a leader who could solve the country’s problems. They then continue to exist by gaining absolute power (supported by powerful people with connections) and could then control the people much easier (usually by military forces).

 

• Can dictatorship be a beneficial form of government?

  • It could be a beneficial form of government but only if the leader(s) is genuinely concerned about his country’s well-being, and has no greed or ambitions to gain the most power.

 

Area of strength: Which standard was your strength and why?

 

: I think my strength in this unit is interpreting central ideas, as well as generating new questions for each topic because I like to analyze things and think critically about the underlying ideas. Another strength of mine is presenting what I've learned visually, and in this unit particularly, my group has been quite creative as we chose to create a rap song.

 

Area of growth: Which standard needs improvement and how can you improve for the future?

 

: My weakness is in writing an essay, summarizing all the information from various sources. To solve this, I plan to organize my time and information better so tha I have more time to consider which elements would fit in my essay well.