Flowers For Algernon

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. Consider the theme The Dignity of All Humans. Reflecting on what you know about your nation’s development, describe one or more historical events where human beings were not treated with dignity. Explain the situation and how their dignity was denied and propose a solution that might have been better.

Teaching Suggestion: It may help to give students categories to choose from, such as political, social, religious, or racial.  Furthermore, providing students with a jumping-off point—such as a current event or a historical event—will help spark ideas and access their prior knowledge, allowing them to engage in the prompt more fully.

When this novel was published, hurtful ableist attitudes were much more commonly acceptable. If you want to be more specific to the novel, you may alter the prompt to be more specific about how people with physical and/or intellectual disabilities are treated in past and contemporary society.

• “30 Basic Human Rights” is a compiled list with explanations about the rights of human beings.