Short Essay In this assignment, you will be required to support a position which you actually do not favor. In other words, you must choose a topic with which you strongly disagree and create a cogent argument in support of that topic. For example, most students react in a strongly negative way to the treatment of women in Japan, e.g. the expectations of society that young women should marry between ages 25-30 and then stay at home to raise and see to the education of their children. In this assignment, using this topic, you would be required to create an argument in support of this view. You would have to identify and discuss the beneficial consequences of this behavior -- how the presence of the mother in the home affects the children, how the attention to their education affects the future of Japan, how the relief from this task for the husband benefits the Japanese firm's competive position and hence Japan's economy. This is not a simple task, for it requires you to suspend your own feelings, which for some of these topics are quite strongly negative. It also requires you to think hard about the consequences of various behaviors -- about the relationship between individual beliefs and practices on the one hand and the social, cultural, and economic consequences of family/individual values on the other. Since the main point of this assignment is to get you to think seriously about something you don't like, you will have to keep that emotion in check. In other words, you must act and write as if you actually are in favor of that something. Hence, you may not introduce your negative views except by way of comparison, i.e. to show the advantages of the practice that you dislike over the practice that you do like. (for example, the fact that the restriction of the woman's choice of career actually leads to an improvement in the care given to children. . . and then you'd need to discuss the social value(s) stemming from that improvement in the care given to children. As they say in Japan, "Gambatte kudasai!" (Please do your best.)