Social Education articles from September 2008

Social Education archives from September 2008

Editor's notebook.(Editorial)
September 1, 2008... As we look forward to a momentous presidential election, this back-to-school issue of Social Education offers articles on some historic milestones and guiding principles of our democracy. The contributions include attractive and interesting...

Ensuring access to the ballot box: voting rights in the United States.(Looking at the Law)
September 1, 2008... The process of voting is a fundamental right and privilege of any democracy. In fact, Merriam-Webster defines the word democracy as "a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly...

Question: who can vote?
September 1, 2008... This year's rollercoaster primary elections and the pending national election, with an anticipated record voter turnout, provide the perfect backdrop for an examination of the questions: Who can vote? And, Who will vote? We can examine this...

Habeas corpus and "enemy combatants".(Cover story)
September 1, 2008... Habeas corpus--"you have the body" in Latin--is an ancient privilege of English law that predates the Magna Carta and was an early power of English courts. The writ, or written order of the court, gave judges the power to command the presence...

Moot Court: Hamdi v Rumsfeld.(HIGH SCHOOL LESSON PLAN)(Yaser Esam Hamdi, Donald Rumsfeld)
September 1, 2008... Yaser Esam Hamdi was captured when his military unit surrendered in Afghanistan in late 2001. He had an AK-47. The U.S. government believed he had trained with the Taliban and had ties to al Qaeda. He was sent to Guantanamo Bay as an "enemy...

Was the Constitution pro-slavery? The changing view of Frederick Douglass.
September 1, 2008... During the crisis of the union that unfolded in America in the nineteenth century and culminated with the Civil War, a debate raged over whether the Constitution was a pro-slavery document. At first glance, this might not seem a debatable...

Frederick Douglass changed my mind about the Constitution.
September 1, 2008... Frederick Douglass changed my mind about the Constitution--no small irony in view of the fact that Douglass himself so dramatically and publicly changed his own mind. Like many historians of slavery, I had long viewed the Constitution as a...

Remapping neural circuits, civics, and presidential libraries: coincidences? You be the judge.(Surfing the Net)(Column)
September 1, 2008... Maybe I've been paying more attention to the coincidences in my life lately, but just as I was beginning to write this column, two coincidences occurred that influenced the websites I selected and the way I designed the column. First, I've...

The two world histories.(Research & Practice)
September 1, 2008... "Research & Practice," established early in 2001, features educational research that is directly relevant to the work of classroom teachers. Here, I invited Ross Dunn to examine the world history curriculum in U. S. schools in light of new...

Conducting interviews to learn about World War II.(Elementary Education)
September 1, 2008... What are the implications of these three contemporary events? 1 In a class discussion, a fifth-grade boy volunteered that his grandfather was a veteran of World War II. The teacher replied, "That can't be correct. They are all dead." ...

Fear, panic, and injustice: Executive Order 9066 a lesson for grades 4-6.(Elementary Education)
September 1, 2008... Rationale: Decision making is one of the essential skills advocated by the National Council for the Social Studies for effective citizenship in a democratic society. Leaders in any society make decisions that influence many lives. In a...

Rough journal page documenting ratification and final page of the Treaty of Paris, 1783.(Teaching with Documents)
September 1, 2008... The 1783 Treaty of Paris formally ended the American Revolution and established the United States as an independent and sovereign nation. In words reminiscent of those in the resolution presented by Richard Henry Lee to Congress in June 1776,...

A vision of powerful teaching and learning in the social studies: building effective citizens.(A Position Statement of National Council for the Social Studies)
September 1, 2008... The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically... Intelligence plus character--that is the goal of true education. --Martin Luther King Jr Rationale The last decade of the twentieth century...

Frederick Douglass, the Constitution, and slavery: a classroom debate.
September 1, 2008... As a seventh grade social studies teacher, I have a chance to teach students about the U.S. Constitution in a way that captures their attention. As I approached this key subject, I thought back to my student days, and I recalled how boring the...

Achievement and innovation in the Middle Ages: students compare civilizations.
September 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The computer game Civilization III allows the player to choose from among some of the great civilizations of the past, such as Roman, Aztec, or Babylonian. In a similar way, we divide seven medieval civilizations...

Now and then: a hierarchy of human needs.(the back page)(Brief article)
September 1, 2008... Society helps each of us stay alive and be healthy, to meet our needs. The first column in this chart shows a hierarchy of human needs. A "hierarchy" is a list that has, at the top, the most important item-or the first step in a series of...