Social Education articles from January 2007

Social Education archives from January 2007

Building the relationships that matter.
January 1, 2007... It's all about relationships! Some of you have heard me speak of BFO's--which, for the uninitiated, are the letters that stand for Blinding Flash of the Obvious. We all know that-- * Every student at every grade level should be...

Editor's notebook.
January 1, 2007... The challenges of poverty, war, and the search for democracy loom large in many parts of the world. In this issue of Social Education, a trio of articles examines some dimensions of these problems with a view to helping teachers bring them to...

Slips of the pen.(Correction notice)
January 1, 2007... UNHCR wishes to clarify that its name is United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees not the United Nations High Commission on Refugees as stated on page 406, in the article Musings on Meaning, Meatloaf, and Moe: Reflections on "The State of...

A teacher's struggle to include 'other' voices in history.(Letters to the Editor)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2007... I laughed when I read Prentice T. Chandler's article "Academic Freedom: A Teacher's Struggle to Include 'Other' Voices in History." He claims that he gives his students "alternative" histories (in contrast to the official textbook) by having...

Prentice Chandler responds.(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2007... Diane Ravitch's critique of my pedagogical and curricular choices as a history teacher, as well as my perspective on academic freedom, is understandable in view of her assumptions concerning the nature of historical accounts and history in...

Teaching about the 2006 Elections.(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2007... I recently read the article "Teaching about the 2006 Elections with the Internet" by C. Frederick Risinger published in the October 2006 issue of Social Education. I found the article interesting and certainly helpful to teachers. I would...

Nobel Peace Laureate Muhammad Yunus: a banker who believes credit is a human right.(Biography)
January 1, 2007... Thirty-one percent of people living in East Asian countries survive on $1 to $2 per day, which is the very definition of extreme poverty, according to the 2006 World Development Indicators. (1) In Bangladesh, birthplace of Nobel Peace Laureate...

Using music to teach about the Great Depression.
January 1, 2007... In 1932, one out of four Americans was out of work, and the banking system was near collapse. The Great Depression is typically taught through history textbooks, but the music of this time allows students to learn about this era through...

Teaching about genocide in a new millennium.(Point of View)
January 1, 2007... It was the beginning of the fall semester, and almost all of our 900 college freshmen sat in the auditorium on the second day of academic orientation. One of the students volunteered to go up on stage and demonstrate the "Darfur is Dying"...

Congo: elections and the battle for mineral resources.
January 1, 2007... Twenty million voters cast ballots July 30, 2006, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's first free election since 1960. A runoff election three months later, between transitional president Joseph Kabila and transitional vice president...

Search and seizure in the schools.(Looking at the Law)(United States Constitution. 4th Amendment)(Law overview)
January 1, 2007... The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects the people of the United States from unreasonable searches and seizures. On first reading, these protections seem clearly defined. The text reads: The right of the people to be...

Website potpourri.(Website list)
January 1, 2007... I received much e-mail as a result of the last column, "Promising Practices in Using the Internet to Teach Social Studies." Several suggested other websites designed by teachers and social studies programs. So, I'm featuring a couple of those...

Comparing international textbooks to develop historical thinking.
January 1, 2007... Throughout my 12 years of teaching history, my students have frequently expressed curiosity about the way past events involving the United States were viewed by other nations. For instance, my students have often wondered how World War II is...

The saffron scourge: society, politics and disease.(yellow fever)
January 1, 2007... Introduction Until Walter Reed discovered the source, Yellow Fever ravaged the Americas and was responsible for throwing cities into desolate wastelands of fear. Today we know that Yellow Fever is caused by the specific mosquito Aedes...

Life behind the wall: Palestinian students online.
January 1, 2007... When I began teaching at the Ramallah Friends High School in the West Bank, about eight miles from Jerusalem, my students did not hide their utter dislike for reading, writing, or anything else that related to English class. I was determined to...

How Robert Scheer's Playing President might help remediate the problem of shallow textbooks and political apathy.(Playing President: My Close Encounters with Nixon, Carter, Bush L Reagan, and Clinton-and How They Did Not Prepare Me for George W. Bush)(Book review)
January 1, 2007... Playing President: My Close Encounters with Nixon, Carter, Bush L Reagan, and Clinton--and How They Did Not Prepare Me for George W. Bush by Robert Scheer, Akashic Books, 2006. 334pp., $14-95 We all know that many American high school...

Protective Custody: Prisoner 34042.(Book review)
January 1, 2007... Protective Custody: Prisoner 34042 by Susan Cernyak-Spatz; ed. Joel Shatzky. N & S Publishers. New York, 2005. 282 pp., $14.95 * Susan Cernyak-Spatz has written a chilling account of her life in three concentration camps: Thereisenstadt,...

Venture Smith's autobiography and runaway ad: enslavement in early New York.
January 1, 2007... Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. notes, in the introduction to The Classic Slave Narratives, that more than 6,000 ex-slaves left some form of written testament between 1703 and 1944. (1) Most enslaved Africans were illiterate. There are...

King coal: a piece of eastern Pennsylvania history.(history of coal mining)
January 1, 2007... Forty years I worked with a pick and drill, Down in the mines against my will, The Coal King's slave, but now it's passed Thanks be to God I am free at last. --Tombstone of an anthracite miner in Hazleton, Pennsylvania ...

Coal: a fuel to be reckoned with.(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... If you think of coal as a fuel of the past--a fuel for railroad steam engines and old basement furnaces--well, think again. Coal is very much a part of the energy we use today and will need tomorrow. This fact presents both opportunities and...