Empowering Global Citizens

groups, the students follow the same process to closely read and think about
the sentence, about what each phrase means, and about what the sentence
means. After they’ve had a chance to evaluate the sentence, have the groups
get together according to which sentence they worked on to compare their
evaluations of it. Later, regroup, and have the students compare the senv
tences. Use the following sentences:

1. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

2. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to
these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to
institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles
and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most

likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Activity 5.2.21)

In English, Please!

The students can work individually or in groups to write a paragraph that
explains the three sentences they examined in modern English.

As an extension of the activity, students can compare the passage'of the
Declaration of Independence to this section of John Locke’s 1690 Secamz’
Nature of Government:

The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power
on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of
man, but to have only the law of Nature for his rule. The liberty
of man in society is to be under no other legislative power but
that established by consent in the commonwealth, nor under the
dominion of any will, or restraint of any law, but what that legis—
lative shall enact according to the trust put in it.