01The Rhythm — Tool, Argument, Stance
The three strands of this curriculum are not three subjects to cover separately. They are three moves in a single thinking process, and a strong unit runs them in order. The concept teaches the tool; the voices stage the argument that tool has always provoked; the project makes the student decide. This is also the C3 inquiry arc — apply disciplinary concepts, evaluate competing evidence, take informed action — in the curriculum's own language.
Beat 2 · The Argument
Hear the Voices
Bring in 2–4 figures from the 250 Voices who fought over exactly that tool. Students place them on the matrix (Private↔Public, Elite↔Democratic) and hear the argument run between them. The tool stops being abstract and becomes contested.
Beat 3 · The Stance
Take a Position
Close with a project, lab, or capstone that forces a decision. Having learned the tool and weighed the arguments, the student now defends their own answer to the unit's question. Pair with the reform-test exit ticket.
Why this order matters. Lead with voices and the economics stays vague; lead with the project and students argue without tools. The tool first gives them language, the voices give them the range of serious positions, and only then is a defended stance more than an opinion. The rhythm can repeat within a long unit — tool, voices, tool, voices, then one culminating stance — but the order within each loop holds.
02The Template — Build Your Own Unit
Six steps to assemble any unit from the three strands. The whole method fits on an index card: pick a question, gather the tools, stage the argument, end on a stance.
- Name the question. Start with one contested question worth a unit — phrased so a thoughtful person could answer it more than one way. (e.g., "Who should own the value that platforms create?") The anthology's central question — who holds economic power, and to whom is it accountable? — is the parent of them all.
- Gather the tools (1–3 primers). Which concepts does a student need to reason about this question well? Pull those primers. Two or three is plenty; more buries the argument.
- Stage the argument (2–4 voices). From the 250, choose figures who genuinely disagreed about this — ideally one builder of power and one challenger, so the matrix has real spread. Placement is the activity, not decoration.
- Choose the stance (1 project). Pick the lab, role-play, or capstone that makes students decide. If none fits exactly, the Define & Defend capstone adapts to any unit question.
- Bookend with routines. Open each class with a warm-up (surface prior belief), close with an exit ticket (check learning). The reform-test closer fits almost any unit's final day.
- Sequence the loops. Short unit: one pass through the rhythm. Long unit: alternate tool and voices two or three times, then one culminating stance. Keep tool-before-voices within every loop.
03Four Units, Built and Ready
Each is a worked example of the rhythm. Teach as-is, or reverse-engineer one to build your own. Every primer, voice section, and project named below is a real piece of this curriculum.
Unit A · ~2–3 weeks
Platforms & Power
Who should own the value that digital platforms create?
ToolsNetwork Effects, Monopoly, and Data primers — why platforms tip toward winners-take-all, and who owns the data that makes them valuable. + What Is a Platform? reader
VoicesSection IV — The Digital Revolution & Its Critics. Pair a platform builder with a critic; place both on Private↔Public and Elite↔Democratic. Where does platform power actually sit, and to whom does it answer?
StanceThe Civic Economy Role-Play Lab (the Data Center Decision) — students negotiate a real platform-economy decision and defend an outcome.
RoutinesOpen with the Data forced-choice ("your data — yours or the platform's?"); close with the reform test on platform ownership.
Unit B · ~3 weeks
The Wealth Divide
Why do owners pull ahead of earners — and what, if anything, should be done?
ToolsWages & Assets, Ownership & Equity, and Compounding teach the mechanism; Predistribution stages the central reform debate (broaden ownership vs. tax-and-transfer). + Movement III: Wealth reader
VoicesSections V (Money, Wealth & Who Controls It) and VII (Economic Anger, Identity & Mobilization) — those who built fortunes beside those who organized against concentration. The matrix spread here is wide.
StanceDefine & Defend capstone — students argue the smallest reform that would broaden prosperity without breaking the engine that creates wealth.
RoutinesOpen with the Predistribution forced-choice (broaden ownership or transfer?); close with "did your mind move?"
Unit C · ~2–3 weeks
Boom, Bust & Who Pays
If downturns renew the economy, why does it matter who absorbs the cost?
ToolsBusiness Cycles (why economies swing), Banking & Central Banks (who governs money and credit), and Labor (the three kinds of unemployment, and who bears them).
VoicesSections III (Scale, Labor & the Machine) and VI (Power, Accountability & Democratic Renewal) — the industrialists and the reformers who fought over crashes, money, and who the system protects in a panic.
StanceDefine & Defend capstone, adapted — students design the smallest cushion for those hit hardest by a downturn that doesn't blunt the cycle's renewing work.
RoutinesOpen with the Business Cycles forced-choice ("recession: system failing or correcting?"); close with the reform test.
Unit D · ~2 weeks · course opener
The Founding Argument
Where should economic power sit — and to whom should it answer?
ToolsThe matrix itself is the tool here: Ownership & Equity and Sovereignty give students the language of power and control before they meet the people who fought over it. + Human Flourishing On-Ramp reader
VoicesSection I — Architects of the Experiment. Hamilton vs. Jefferson as the origin of every later fight; the abolitionists and suffragists who demanded the experiment deliver. Place them all; find the argument that never ended.
StanceStudents write their own placement on the matrix and defend it — establishing the personal stake they'll carry through every later unit. This unit sets up the whole course.
RoutinesOpen with "where should power sit?"; close by having students rewrite the central question in their own words.
Sequencing the four. The Founding Argument works as the course opener — it installs the matrix and the central question every other unit returns to. Platforms & Power, The Wealth Divide, and Boom, Bust & Who Pays can run in any order after it, each a self-contained loop of the rhythm. Together they trace the argument from 1776 to the present without ever being merely chronological — because the founding question is still the one being fought over in the platform economy.