The storming of the US Capitol on January 6th, 2021 shocked the world and challenged democratic norms. Considerations on how to teach the events of January 6th remains an open question, not just for the United States but for other democratic nations, including Germany. This comparative case study explored the similarities and differences in how US…

Lately, there has been a growing interest in media. As a result, many trends are found from both the academic and industrial points of view. News channels, for example, play an important role in transmitting news about political situations, military events and other issues to people all over the world. The language used in news reports or even in…

Many elementary and middle school students are confronted by media messages constantly. They receive messages not only from family and friends, but from television and social media outlets. The media messages about current events are often politically biased, polarized in nature, and potentially inaccurate, especially on social media platforms.…

International relations professors have sought to incorporate current events into their curriculum through various mechanisms. A traditional way to incorporate the news into the classroom is to have students either subscribe and read a particular newspaper or watch the nightly news and hold them responsible for that information. However, with the…

A general overview of the Writing Democracy project, including its origin story and key objectives. Draws parallels between the historical context that gave rise to the New Deal's Federal Writers' Project and today, examining the potential for a reprise of FWP in community literacy and public rhetoric and introducing articles collected in this…

From the housing crisis to high debt, from stagnating incomes to high unemployment, the Great Recession has touched most aspects of many people's lives. College graduates, a highly educated group often insulated from the worst of economic challenges, have not been spared. Their unemployment rate reached 9.1 percent in 2010--the highest annual rate…

U.S. students have consistently lagged behind their peers in other nations on international science assessments--a performance increasingly at odds with the challenge of being able to live and compete in a global environment, powered by innovations in science, engineering and technology. A strong foundation in science is clearly critical if…

This paper revisits the history of environmental education in Australia in the 1970s and 1980s and draws parallels between these and current events in four countries, including Australia. It is argued that little has changed and that few environmental educators confront the inherently political nature of their work. It is concluded that…

This study compared the preferred writing topics of urban and rural middle school students. Eighth graders (n = 205) responded to a brief survey of preferred writing topics in the descriptive writing genres of real or imagined stories, reports, and opinions. While some preferred writing topics were divergent such as society, crime, and violence,…

Vietnam and El Salvador can serve as models depicting the failure of American education to teach students to critically and objectively examine a current event. Only a decade after the Vietnam debacle, public schools are once again equating critical inquiry into the formulation of American foreign policy with anti-Americanism. (RM)

Current U.S. policies toward Central American nations motivated this examination of the presentation of the region in 12 social studies textbooks. In order to determine if each text's treatment of Central America was representative of the entire book, three regions, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean were selected for comparison purposes. The…

According to their personal points of view regarding United States politics, a panel of foreign correspondents from other nations evaluated the United States electoral process and discussed the difficulties involved in conveying the complexities of this process to an audience. This document contains an edited transcript of the panel's comments.…

Discussion of ready reference and current events collections in high school libraries focuses on a comparison of two CD-ROM services, EBSCO Topic Search and the SIRS Researcher. Considers licensing; access; search strategies; viewing articles; currency; printing; added value features; and advantages of CD-ROMs. (LRW)

This series of lesson plans provides an overview of the Federal Republic of Germany. Transparencies and instructions are provided for each of the four lessons. Lesson 1 looks at "Culture and Perspective Taking on the Federal Republic of Germany" with five activities relating to: (1) "Impressions of Germany and Germans"; (2)…