Humanities II

Good description- thorough- with charts and graphs

Links to online magazines from around the world

In honor of J.D. Salinger, who died on January 28, 2010, at 91, we offer the following Times and Learning Network resources for teachers and students.

Blending oral history with memoir, "We Had Sneakers, They Had Guns" chronicles the sacrifices, tragedies and triumphs of that unprecedented moment in American history.

The NY Times celebrates the 50th Anniversary with lesson plans and resources.

For some insight on segregation, integration and race relations, NPR's Tavis Smiley talks with a man who has experience in what kids thought back during the days of segregation, and what they think today. Lots of links to other programs and sites here as well.

The Texas State Board of Education adopted a social studies and history curriculum Friday that amends or waters down the teaching of the civil rights movement, slavery, America's relationship with the United Nations, and hundreds of other items. The ideological debate over the guidelines, which drew intense scrutiny beyond Texas, will be used to teach about 4.8 million Texas students for the next 10 years. The standards also will be used by textbook publishers who often develop materials for other states based on those approved in Texas

Frontline terrorism search results

This six minute video excerpt from "Target America" comes at the end of the documentary, and just after the last terrorist attack during the Reagan administration is cited-the bombing of Pan Am Flight #103 on Dec. 21, 1988. This excerpt begins with the seeming policy shift by the Reagan White House in the war against terrorism. And it ends with the thoughts of key policymakers who had participated in the battles against terrorists during the 1980s, and the lessons they learned.

As the Bush White House weighs its options, what are the lessons from America's first "War on Terrorism" in the 1980s? Includes interviews, a timeline, video, and the evolution of Islamic terrorism.

This 5:00 video clip from "Looking for Answers" is from that part of the program dealing with the rise of militant Islam in Egypt. And it features Ayman al-Zawahiri, the young medical student who helped establish the radical Egyptian Islamic Jihad in the 1970s; he is now one of Osama bin Laden's top aides and on the FBI's most wanted terrorist list for the September 11th attacks. This video excerpt shows al-Zawahiri in the early 1980s ferociously condemning torture and other human rights violations by the Egyptian government - from the jail cell he is sharing with dozens of other Egyptian militant

A Global Teen Survey In the weeks following the 9/11 attack, America decided they must end terrorism so no further attacks would take place. This survey was designed so we could see how students from all over the world felt about this issue.

The Center for American Progress and Foreign Policy magazine teamed up to ask over 100 of America's most esteemed terrorism and national security experts for their assessment. This survey seeks for the first time to mine the highest echelons of the U.S. national security establishment across the ideological spectrum for their insights on the war on terrorism.

In this lesson, students experience various works of fine and performance art in the classroom and online as well as consider artists' and critics' definitions of art. They then create their own definitions and express them in the form of original works for an evening gallery opening.

It was ingenious. So much so that some listeners wished to be high school history teachers so they could "borrow" the analogy. Even though my first listen was is in a semi-awake state, I understood enough to be informed, entertained, and left wanting to hear it all again. What caught my ear and interest was an NPR interview with Marc Lynch, author of an article that explained world politics through the analogy of a rappers' feud. The clarity the analogy brought to the more complex issue of foreign policy and "rogue" nations amazed me. It truly was ingenious. Such analogies are products of what I call "thinking in the seams," thinking that merges ideas from different disciplines to generate something novel and beneficial. Researchers use varying terms for such thinking-cross-disciplinary thinking, multi-disciplinary thinking, and interdisciplinary thinking-and define it as the use of frameworks from one discipline as "points of departure for discovering or confirming similar structures and relations in other disciplines."1 It stitches together perspectives or modes of inquiry from two or more disciplines to explore ideas. It is thinking "in the seams." Creativity, innovation, and deepened understanding can result from interdisciplinary thinking. Despite these potential benefits, schools rarely cultivate the "mental dexterity" required for thinking in the seams.2

Welcome to Inquiry-based Learning. Start here in the "Explanation" section, which is all about the CONCEPT. Then go on to "Demonstration" and the following sections, where we move from CONCEPT TO CLASSROOM!

Welcome! The Inquiry Page is more than a website. It's a dynamic virtual community where inquiry-based education can be discussed, resources and experiences shared, and innovative approaches explored in a collaborative environment.