Fitting Current Issues Into "The Curriculum"
As a Social Studies teacher, current issues seem great. They're more immediate and appealing to students than a lot of historical issues - and studying them can help raise awareness of problems around the world.
Of course, there's the problem of fitting them into "the curriculum." With so much to teach, how do you justify taking time away to deal with a current issue - especially if your supervisor is a stickler for "curriculum alignment"?
A colleague of mine found himself in trouble for not properly considering this quandary.
He showed a movie in class that examined the development of gangs in American cities - and their link to the Black Panther party in particular. This didn't seem to line up directly with anything in the curriculum (he was then around World War I).
However, we work in a city with plenty of gang problems - so it seemed like a relevant enough issue.
One of the days that he was showing the movie, the supervisor came in to observe him for the formal evaluation. The supervisor proceeded to nail him in the evaluation for a number of things - including that the movie and topic were not aligned with the curriculum.
If it were up to me, I'd probably burn the curriculum guide and radically re-design our Social Studies courses. However, that's not up to me.
I made a similar choice - to show a movie about a current issue - but I was prepared for any possible attacks. In order to highlight the current genocide and crisis in Darfur, I wanted to show my classes Hotel Rwanda.
This is a spectacular movie, and I think it does a great job of both telling the story of the Rwandan genocide and framing the current issue of the Darfur genocide. How could I align it with the curriculum, though?
Well, after a bit of thinking, I remembered a random content strand from the NJ Core Curriculum Content Standards. Standard 6.2.12 E 15 states:
Compare and contrast current and past genocidal acts and other acts of hatred and violence for the purposes of subjugation and exploitation (e.g., Holocaust, Native Americans, Irish famine, Armenia, Ukrainian collectivization, Cambodia, Rwanda) and discuss present and future actions by individuals and governments to prevent the reoccurrence of such events.
This turned out to be perfect. We were just about to study the Indian Removal Act and Trail of Tears. What more perfect alignment with the curriculum could there be than to use this as an opportunity to link the Native American exploitation and genocide with that of the Rwandans and Sudanese?
As it turned out, my supervisor never questioned the movie. But I was ready, if he did.
Still, it leaves me a bit uneasy that imporant issues could go undiscussed because they don't neatly fit into the curriculum. What is a Social Studies class for, if not to discuss important social issues?
I just stumbled upon an great website at the Pulitzer Center about the use of child labor in mining coltan (a mineral used in cell phones and other portable electronic devices) in the Congo.
This seems like another great issue to raise and discuss in class - but I'm at a loss for how to connect it. There's certainly no mention of the Congo in the district or state curriculum (odd how the Armenian Genocide made it into the state standards, but Leopold's enslavement and murder of 10 million Congolese was left out).
Maybe I'll just let this one lie. Still, it bugs me that important current issues can be cut out because they didn't happen to get included in the exhaustive but incomplete standards. What do you when you want to teach a current issue, but find it doesn't line up clearly with the curriculum?
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