This curriculum guide is designed to prepare teachers to introduce basic ethnic and multicultural concepts into the classroom, and to help students, through the presented readings and activities, to understand and appreciate the role ethnicity plays in family, local, national, and global life. Four units invite students to apply creative,…

Designed to enrich secondary level social studies education, this manual provides teaching strategies and units on local, state, and federal government; global education; law and individual rights; and citizenship skills. Teaching strategies include case studies, using community resources, using the newspaper, quantitative inquiry, simulation…

"The Federalist Papers," a collection of 85 essays on the principles of republican government written to support the ratification of the Constitution of 1787, has been praised as an outstanding work by individuals ranging from such founding fathers as Thomas Jefferson and George Washington to contemporary scholars in history and…

A collection of resources for high school history and government teachers and their students, this volume treats core ideas on constitutional government in the United States. James Madison's ideas as found in "The Federalist Papers" are examined in conjunction with their counterpoints in essays of the Anti-Federalists. This volume…

A major constitutional issue in the twentieth century is the extent to which the U.S. Constitution should be interpreted to fit changing times and circumstances. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, the Supreme Court dispensed a "mechanical jurisprudence" based on an "objective" interpretation of the Constitution and…

Unit 6, the final unit in a series on Indiana state history designed to be taught in Indiana secondary schools, examines the position of Indiana in the nation and the world. Chapter 1 focuses on Indiana during the 1960s and 1970s. Indiana state government tackled the jobs of reapportionment, taxes, and the passage of stronger civil rights…

The objective of this textbook review was to evaluate the textbook's capacity for imparting the knowledge and skills necessary for democratic citizenship along with an enthusiasm for civic participation. A panel of scholars reviewed 18 U.S. government and civics textbooks on the basis of: (1) coverage, (2) engagement, (3) constitutional themes,…

The purposes of this teaching manual are to provide teachers with writing assignments related to the justice system and to generate newspaper materials for JUST-US. JUST-US is a newspaper written by and for students studying the justice system in the United States. Eight issues are published during the school year and distributed to law-related…

The methodology used in the Maine Assessment of Educational Progress in Citizenship and Writing is described in this report. The chapters of the report are: I. Introduction--background and purpose of the project, sampling considerations, Exercise Package development, administration and scoring, and data analysis plan; II. Sample Design--general…

A sequential series of four fifteen minute classroom television programs provide a drama whereby students can identify with a candidate's problems of getting elected to political office. Major purposes of the overall program are: 1) to make students aware of electoral processes in a democracy; 2) to emphasize the importance of each individual's…

Presents a lesson on capital punishment for juveniles based on three hypothetical cases. The goal of the lesson is to have students understand the complexities of decisions regarding the death penalty for juveniles. (JDH)

Presents a two-activity mini-unit for social issues/government courses that lays the groundwork for active student involvement in local environmental problems. Objectives include: (1) student expression of feelings about their environment, (2) identifying local environmental issues/problems, (3) indicating current solutions to the problems, and…

Community service projects that are part of a religious studies program in a Catholic secondary girl's school in Canada are described. The experiential social education projects are intended to foster and nurture responsibility in students and to help them develop participatory skills. (RM)

This curriculum unit focuses attention on the evolving relationship the United States has with the emerging East Asian giant, China. Developed by the Choices for the 21st Century Education Project, Choices material places special emphasis on the importance of educating students in their participatory role as citizens. The unit considers the global…

This paper describes and analyzes definitions of democracy and civic education of teachers and students in each of three types of secondary schools in an emerging democracy: the Czech Republic. The paper's theoretical framework is rooted in anthropological and sociological notions of the social context of culture that attend to the fact that all…