Students will read excerpts from the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson and research the risks and benefits of DDT. Students will then pretend that they are living in 1962 when the book was published, and write a letter to their senator arguing whether or not the government should ban DDT based on the evidence presented in Carson's book and their own research.
Designed for an AP environmental course, this module would be taught in conjunction with a unit on pesticides and toxicology. It engages what may be the single most seminal text for the environmental movement and assesses the quality of the evidence used in its arguments.
This module is paced to take roughly eleven hours of classroom time, or thirteen fifty-minutes periods. It was created by Amy Klein Wesselman (working with Michelle Buroker, Renee Boss, and Susan Weston) in the Summer 2013 Science Design Jam and is shared with special thanks to the Kentucky Education Association for the use of their Lexington facilities.
