Advanced Placement (AP)
This essay is a response to a prompt that asked students to argue the extent that Oscar Wilde's quote, Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man'soriginal virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and rebellion' is true(1) Oscar Wilde once observed, "Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made,through disobedience and through rebellion. Looking back on history, there is clearly truth to Wilde's assertion(2) The earliest example of American disobedience is the rebellion over the Stamp Act. The American people were furious with the British for enacting the Stamp Act, the firstdirect tax on the colonies after a period of neglect. The colonists revolted, declaring, 'No taxation without representation and got the Stamp Act repealed. However it was onlywith disobedience on the part of the colonists that the British decided to repeal the Stamp Act. Otherwise, it would have set a precedent for the British to continue directlytaxing the colonists. Eventually the colonists were fed up with being colonies and launched their next act of disobedience-the American Revolution(3) Years later, Henry David Thoreau, a prominent transcendentalist writer, crafted an entire essay on the values of civil disobedience, and those opinions can be seenthroughout the 20th century. His ideas led to the most pivotal historical changes, however, in the Civil Rights Movement. Leading figures such as Martin Luther King, Jr. andRosa Parks urged African Americans to spark social and political change through acts of civil disobedience. They staged sit-ins, marches, and peaceful protests, all in thehopes of obtaining the civil rights they deserved. Their success is clear in the many social and legislative changes that followed the Civil Rights Movement, one of the mostnotable being the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I learned about all of this and more during my 5th grade field trip to the Civil Rights Museum, where I purchased a t-shirt with thequote: "Well-behaved women seldom make history."(4) Today we still see evidence of civil disobedience sparking progress and change. In recent elections, we've seen candidates on both the Democratic and Republican sidespromote new ideas, many of them very anti-establishment. We've also seen citizens stage their own forms of disobedience to effect change and promote new ideas. Theseexamples reveal that "rebellion can, in fact, lead to profound change.(5) Oscar Wilde's idea that disobedience is what drives progress is clearly an accurate one. Disobedience has led to people questioning society, causing historical change, andthinking of progressive ideas. After all, "We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams."The student is working on a new version of the essay and wants to include an explicit statement of the essay's thesis.Which of the following would best serve as the thesis statement for the essay?Disobedience also promotes progressive thought and political progress; this is evident in our current elections today.Disobedience challenges established systems and societal norms; without it, we would never progress as a whole.Disobedience has been responsible for much of the change in our country, including our own fight for independence from BritainDisobedience is clearly what drives the essential change of society, as illustrated through examples such as the Civil Rights movement.
