Social Education articles from November 2005

Social Education archives from November 2005

Editor's notebook.
November 1, 2005... In the field of history education, great strides have been made in using primary sources as a means of engaging students, thus enabling teachers to avoid the pitfalls of simply teaching to the text and the deadening effects of "drill and kill"...

Dew-ey (or not Dew-ey): a social reconstructionist?(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2005... William B. Stanley's article in the Research and Practice section of the September 2005 edition of Social Education (vol. 69, no. 5) posed the question, "Should social studies educators transmit or transform the socialorder?" Instructuring his...

Teaching civics with primary source documents.(Introduction)
November 1, 2005... Sometimes it is more than just embarrassing to lack civic awareness. Let's take the case of Jacob Koontz, a Revolutionary War veteran living in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, in 1816. On July 14 of that year, Koontz, apparently unaware that the...

Making the abstract concrete.(using government documents in teaching)
November 1, 2005... On August 19, 1981, President Ronald Reagan did something that had never been done before: He nominated a woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court. This "first," however, was accomplished through a procedure that had been completed...

The evolution of a bill: teaching legislative process.
November 1, 2005... Congressman Edward Rees of Kansas introduced a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives on February 8, 1954, to create a national holiday that would honor our nation's veterans. He said in a speech on the floor of the House that he did it so...

The constitutional amendment process.(teaching content)
November 1, 2005... Although the process is not described in great detail, Article V of the United States Constitution allows for and provides instruction on amending the Constitution. While the amendment process currently consists of six steps, the Constitution...

Documents and civic duties.(Part II: Documents Can Help Reinforce Behaviors: (The Role that an Individual Plays in a Democracy))
November 1, 2005... When Benjamin Franklin emerged from the State House in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at the close of the Constitutional Convention in September 1787, he was reportedly asked what type of government had been created. According to lames McHenry,...

Five Star Leaders: learning through Civic Engagement.(REINFORCING BEHAVIORS)
November 1, 2005... Twenty years ago, I was already a veteran teacher, feeling rather satisfied with my career and academic attainment of a graduate degree in political science. During the summer of 1986, however, as a participant at a teacher institute, I...

Civil conversations using primary documents.(REINFORCING BEHAVIORS)
November 1, 2005... * Does the objective declared in the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution to "form a more perfect union" have relevance for us today, in the age of blue states and red states? Or does it simply reflect the concerns of the founders at the time of...

Documents informing students, students informing officials: the project citizen mayoral youth conference.(promoting students to participate in local and state government)
November 1, 2005... Since 1996, Miami-Dade County Public Schools' Division of Social Sciences has participated in the We the People: Project Citizen Program, sponsored by the Center for Civic Education. Every year since then, our program has grown tremendously. We...

Websites for primary sources and civics education.
November 1, 2005... The World Wide Web has become an excellent source for facsimiles, images, and transcriptions of primary sources. As it would be impossible to provide a comprehensive list of all the sites, this annotated list highlights selective sites that...

The civic mission of schools.(social education staff)
November 1, 2005... Social Education staff As social studies educators, we emphasize the civic mission of schools, and the need to provide our students with citizenship education of the highest quality. As NCSS members are well aware, the focus of recent...