A classroom examination of the featured historical article announcing North Carolina's ratification of the Constitution can springboard into a lesson on federalism, the Bill of Rights, and the ratification process.

Deliberation and inquiry can go hand-in-hand. Inquiry-based learning calls on teachers to facilitate student-led discovery, something that can only happen when students ask questions and weigh possible answers before settling on a plausible and evidentiary answer. Teaching through inquiry is about setting students up to wrestle with the issue at…

What do people think of when they hear the word "census"? For some, the word prompts them to think of representation in Congress; others think of genealogy and family history. For still others, the census is viewed as something strange or foreboding. Yet for teachers and students, census records can help create a meaningful and relevant…

Voter participation in elections is the cornerstone of U.S. democracy, yet there is a history of voter suppression and intimidation tactics that specifically target Black Americans which did not cease in the twenty-first century, it merely transformed. Teachers can help students get ahead of voter suppression efforts by making sure students…

The C3 Framework prompts middle school and high school students to assess the ways people have worked to promote the common good. The College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework. It also summons students to take informed action. One way that Wendy Harris, a high school social studies teacher at a Deaf school in Saint Paul, MN, advance this goal…

Shifting to an inquiry-based practice can be challenging. How should teachers get started? How many times should teachers plan for inquiry? What do teachers do when students struggle with inquiry? How long does it take for students to buy in to the inquiry process? These kinds of questions, and the concerns that underlie them, can create an…

Data on age and sex composition are some of the most basic statistics a nation can collect about its people. They are determined by births, deaths, and migration and, in turn, affect other demographic characteristics such as fertility rates and regional changes in population (increases or decreases). In fact, both of these are the two constants…

As Americans contend with the question of which statues and markers belong (or don't) on public land, government leaders, civic groups, and citizens must be prepared to engage these conversations and answer a range of related questions. In this article, the authors view arguments over public statues--statues of persons that reside on public…

After a 72-year struggle, the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted American women the right to vote in 1920. Coupled with the Fifteenth Amendment, which extended voting rights to African American men, the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment transformed the power and potency of the American electorate. This article invites the…

While both the 1918 influenza (aka Spanish flu) and the 2020 COVID-19 pandemics were devastating, the 1918 influenza pandemic was considered worse. Its origins are still debated, but it was first identified in the United States at Fort Riley, an Army base in Kansas. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an estimated…

This 2020 issue of "Social Education," marking the centennial anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment, seeks to broaden understanding of the suffrage story in several ways: by considering the strategies and tactics used by the suffragists to foment their agitation; by acknowledging the ways in which further work was needed to secure…

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. The fight was a protracted one, lasting over 70 years, and it did not result in equity for diverse women. Voting and citizenship came to women of color differently depending on region, class, race, and ethnicity. For example,…

On a hot July day in 1854, 24-year-old schoolteacher Elizabeth Jennings, accompanied by a friend, attempted to board a horse-drawn trolley to attend Sunday church services in Lower Manhattan. The Irish conductor refused, telling Jennings, who was African American, to await a horsecar for "her people." When Jennings resisted, the…

The nationwide commemoration in 2020 of the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment is an opportunity to explore not only women's long struggle to achieve this landmark moment, but also to engage in an exploration of women's civic engagement during the woman suffrage movement. The terms "woman suffrage" and "suffragist" often…

In the 1930s, suffragist and women's rights activist Maud Wood Park "had the happy idea of dramatizing a series of episodes from Lucy Stone's life." This idea resulted in the publication, in 1938, of a 162-page nine-act play, "Lucy Stone: A Chronicle Play," based on a biography of the abolitionist and suffragist by her…