Social Education

Submitted by rich on Tue, 11/25/2008 - 11:49am

Table of Contents

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CONTENTS

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Social Education

May/June 2012, Volume 76, Number 3

 

115
Our Civic Mission: Ask Congress to Support the Sandra Day O’Connor Civic Learning Act

116
Editor's Notebook

117
Teaching with Documents
Letter from Thomas Moran to Ferdinand Hayden and Paintings by Thomas Moran
Lee Ann Potter, Elizabeth K. Eder, and Michael Hussey

123
Looking at the Law
Health Care and the High Court: An Overview

128
The Top Five Narratives for Teaching about China’s Cultural Revolution
Lindsey Cafarella and Chara Haeussler Bohan

132
No Place to Escape: Explaining the Cultural Revolution to American Students
Ji-li Jiang

135
The Carter G. Woodson Book Awards

137
History + English + Humanities = Critical, Creative, Global Thinkers
Jana Kirchner and Tracy Inman

141
The Phenomenon of Kony 2012: A Teaching Guide
Barbara B. Brown, John Metzler, and Christine Root (with background guide by Patrick Vinck)

147
Promoting Student Comprehension with Cooperative Learning
Linda A. Fernsten

151
Mexican Americans in the Era of World War II: Studying the Sleepy Lagoon Case and Zoot Suit Riots
Axel Donizetti Ramirez

157
Surfing the Net Integrating Art and Music into Social Studies Instruction
C. Frederick Risinger

159
NCSS Notebook
2011 NCSS House of Delegates Resolutions

Editor's Notebook

Editor’s Notebook
Michael Simpson

Social Education
May/June 2012, Volume 76, Number 3

cover

As we look forward to summer and its refreshing opportunity for creative reading and enjoyment of the arts, this issue of Social Education will hopefully help our readers to take advantage of the interlude with its suggestions for the use of literature and the arts in the classroom, and its exploration of some highly creative teaching ideas.

The issue opens with an illustrated Teaching with Documents feature on the survey of the Yellowstone region in Wyoming in the 1870s. After Congress appropriated funds for the survey in 1871, the expedition leader included a photographer and a painter in the team. Their artwork captured the imagination of the American public by depicting the region’s key geological characteristics and magnificent landscapes. Lee Ann Potter, Elizabeth K. Eder, and Michael Hussey introduce readers to the expedition and suggest teaching activities that focus on a letter and artwork by members of the survey team.

The Supreme Court will soon issue its decision on the Obama Administration’s health care legislation. The Court heard oral arguments about the case in March. Our Looking at the Law column offers lucid summaries of the four key issues that are central to the Court’s decision. The contributors to this month’s column are Bradley W. Joondeph, Bryan Camp, Jordan Barry, Elliot B. Pollack, Erwin Chemerinsky and Steven Schwinn.

The Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s was an extraordinary period of Chinese history. Among the publications describing its impact are books that are suitable for students of school age. Lindsey Cafarella and Chara Haeussler Bohan identify five outstanding trade books that teachers can use in class, and provide a lesson plan for studying the Cultural Revolution that introduces students to the nature of propaganda and the power of media in a dictatorship.

Ji-li Jiang, a young student in China at the time of the Cultural Revolution, provides an insider’s view of the events, which caused great suffering for her family. Ji-li is the author of Red Scarf Girl, the trade book that is the focus of the lesson plan of the previous article. She describes her experiences explaining the Cultural Revolution to American school children on her numerous school visits. The most important lesson that she derives from that turbulent period is the need for countries to avoid the concentration and abuse of political power.

This issue includes one of our members’ favorite annual features, the list of Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People, selected by a committee of NCSS members in cooperation with the Children’s Book Council. The selection identifies books of exceptional social studies value that can enhance the school curriculum. The annotations by members of the selection committee identify the strands of the social studies standards to which each book is most relevant.

Complementing the Notable Trade Books are reviews of another set of outstanding books, which have received the annual NCSS Carter G. Woodson Award. These books have been selected for their exceptional educational value in enhancing students’ knowledge and understanding of ethnicity and race relations in the United States. This year’s selected books deal with the 1960 Greensboro sit-in, the story of a nineteenth-century slave who was a skilled potter, the persecution of Leo Frank, and the kidnapping and murder of Emmett Till.

Collaboration between English teachers and social studies teachers can yield rich rewards by engaging students more deeply in their studies. Jana Kirchner and Tracy F. Inman describe the accomplishments of a world history/world literature class in their high school, focusing on sessions in which students read Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart at the same time as they studied British colonialism in Africa. The authors highlight the benefits of the class for developing critical thinking skills and a global disposition among their students.

Efforts to capture Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony and bring him to trial before the International Criminal Court have been strongly promoted by the KONY 2012 video, which has gone viral on the Internet. Barbara B. Brown, John Metzler, Christine Root, and Patrick Vinck suggest ways of converting the popularity of the video into a teaching opportunity that can promote greater student understanding of Uganda and other African countries, while avoiding the inaccurate assumptions and analyses that often pervade discussions of Africa.

Linda A. Fernsten recommends cooperative learning strategies that work well in the social studies classroom and shows how they can be particularly effective when applied to the study of the civil rights movement. She points out that we live in an age when “classroom teachers must compete with all kinds of media for students’ attention,” (150) and shows how cooperative endeavors can stimulate achievements by students who underperform on reading assignments that require them to work on their own.

Axel Donizetti Ramirez offers a creative and intriguing lesson plan examining the Zoot Suit Riots in Los Angeles in June 1943, in which naval servicemen clashed with Mexican Americans. In a simulation that also includes the Sleepy Lagoon judicial case of 1942, students take on the character of a young Mexican American living in East Los Angeles and examine the choices available to him. The activity offers students a deeper understanding of what it was like to be a Mexican American in Los Angeles during that troubled time.

Just as social studies education is under pressure by school systems seeking to assign more time to reading and math instruction, the teaching of arts and music in schools has also been jeopardized. C. Frederick Risinger points out, however, that music and art “are primary aspects of human history and culture” (157). His Internet column highlights the dangers of their erosion from the school scene, and identifies some outstanding music and art sites that can benefit the social studies classroom.

As always, the editors of Social Education welcome the comments of readers on any of the contributions to this issue at socialed@ncss.org.

Teaching With Documents Archive

Articles from the "Teaching with Documents" series are available free online to NCSS members. Click on the ones you want to view and print. Teaching with Documents articles, published originally in Social Education over the last decade or so, were written by staff at the National Archives and Records Administration. Each article features a primary source document accompanied by teaching activities and lessons that focus on history, civics, and many other social studies disciplines. Remember, too, that other articles from back issues of Social Education, Middle Level Learning, and Social Studies and the Young Learner are available to members at the online archives, www.socialstudies.org/members/. The articles listed here include the primary source documents and complete lesson plans for middle and secondary classrooms. They are all presented in PDF format.
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