“Using the Trial of John Peter Zenger (1735)
to Teach About Freedom of Expression:
A Focus on Understanding Two Sides of an Argument”

III. CONCLUSION

• Students came away from the lesson with a better understanding of what “rights” are.
  
  
• Students learned that freedom is not unlimited, and that these limits change over time.
  
  
• Students successfully collaborated in small groups to negotiate meaning and come to consensus.
  
  
• They were able to support a thesis statement by finding evidence in a scaffolded primary source document.
  
  
• Many, but not all, were able to identify, and acknowledge counter arguments to strengthen their position.
  
  
• The T-Chart was an effective framework to support students in constructing expository sentences showing position, support, and counter-arguments. However, they had difficulty with “drawing the line” portion of the T-Chart where students had to acknowledge the limits of their position. For some students, this kind of sophisticated thinking may be beyond their readiness. But all students got valuable modeling, exposure and practice with these language structures. In the future, we should provide more systematic practice with this kind of higher order thinking skills using simple, everyday examples.
  
  
• Because of time constraints, we were unable to bring the students to the point of drafting their Zenger essays from the t-chart.
  
  
• In order to support students in writing these kinds of essays independently, they need multiple opportunities to practice both the writing and thinking skills required.
  
  
• By going achronologically (starting with the present cases and working backwards), we were successful in helping students understand the relevance of this old case.

  Applying the format to other lessons/content

  We ultimately ended up using the T-chart scaffold to support students in the persuasive writing that was expected of them in their reading program during the same months of the Zenger unit. Students looked not so much at the rights of an individual that were in conflict with a Common Good, but at two opposing sides. We integrated the T-Chart into a debate lesson which required them to divide into two groups: the patriots or loyalists. This required them to defend their opinions while acknowledging the counter arguments.

  It was proposed to us around this time that maybe “Individual Rights” vs “the Common Good” was an imprecise dichotomy as both sides of a case typically feel that the protection of their rights makes for a better society, i.e., that both sides may call themselves the Common Good. We eventually modified the T-chart to distinguish instead between “People who see the Common Good as being served by some people having more rights” and “People who see the Common Good as being served by having more restrictions on some people’s rights.” We used a T-chart with this modification to support student analysis of other current events, for example, the debate on the rights of undocumented immigrants.

  Going forward, we hope to develop other language templates to help the other critical thinking skills (understanding significance, compare/contrast, cause/effect, and recognizing multiple perspectives.