Students will learn the constitutional principles and the democratic foundations of national, state, and local systems and institutions. Further, students will learn how to exercise the rights and responsibilities of participation in civic life and to analyze and evaluate public policies. This understanding entails insight into political power, how it is distributed and expressed, the types and purposes of governments, and their relationships with the governed. Political relationships among the United States and other nations are also included in this content area.
CA. RIGHTS, RESPONSIBILITIES, AND PARTICIPATION
Students will understand the rights and responsibilities of civic life and employ the skills of effective civic participation.
SECONDARY GRADES
1. Develop and defend a position on a public policy issue within our democracy.
2. Assess the reasons why participation of an attentive, knowledgeable, and competent citizenry is important to constitutional democracy, using examples from personal or historical experience.
3. Describe the circumstances under which civil disobedience might be justified.
4. Demonstrate an understanding of the processes of voter registration and voter participation.
CB. PURPOSE AND TYPES OF GOVERNMENT
Students will understand the types and purposes of governments, their evolution, and their relationships with the governed.
SECONDARY GRADES
1. Compare and contrast the purpose and the structure of the United States government with other governments (parliamentary, dictatorship, monarchy) with respect to ideology, values, and histories.
2. Assess the different jurisdictions and roles of local, state, and federal governments in relation to an important public policy issue.
3. Analyze the major arguments for and against representative government as distinguished from direct democracy.
4. Assess the tension between the public's need for government services and the varying availability of revenue through taxes at the local, state, and federal levels.
5. Evaluate the role of the media and public opinion in United States politics, including ways the government and media influence public opinion.
CC. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT AND CONSTITUTIONS
Students will understand the constitutional principles and the democratic foundations of the political institutions of the United States.
SECONDARY GRADES
1. Explain the historical foundations of constitutional government in the United States (e.g., Magna Carta, Roman Republic, colonial experience, Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, Constitution of the United States).
2. Evaluate the Federalist and anti-Federalist positions on the ratification of the Constitution in light of historical developments.
3. Evaluate the effectiveness of the Constitution as a vehicle for change.
4. Demonstrate an understanding of the meaning and importance of traditional democratic assumptions such as individual rights, the common good, self-government, justice, equality, and patriotism.
5. Demonstrate how the United States Constitution uses checks and balances in order to prevent the abuse of power (e.g., Marbury vs. Madison, Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, Watergate).
6. Evaluate, take, and defend positions on current issues regarding judicial protection and individual rights.
7. Examine civil rights issues related to well-known Supreme Court decisions.
CD. INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Students will understand the political relationships among the United States and other nations.
SECONDARY GRADES
1. Analyze the processes used to develop foreign policy.
2. Trace the development of a current major world event and predict the possible outcomes (e.g., population, global warming).
3. Demonstrate how domestic policy may impose constraints or obligations on United States actions in the world, using current examples.
4. Evaluate the benefits and difficulties of international cooperation, using specific examples.
Students will learn to analyze the human experience through time, to recognize the relationships of events and people, and to identify patterns, themes, and turning points of change using the chronology of history and major eras. In interpreting current and historical events, students will evaluate the credibility and perspectives of multiple sources of information gathered from technology, documents, artifacts, maps, the arts, and literature.
HA. CHRONOLOGY
Students will use the chronology of history and major eras to demonstrate the relationships of events and people.
SECONDARY GRADES
1. Identify and analyze major events and people that characterize each of the significant eras in the United States and world history. (See suggested eras below.)
Eras in United States History
The Americas to 1600
The Colonial Era, 1500-1754
The Revolutionary Era, 1754-1783
Nation Building, 1783-1815
The Expanding Nation, 1815-1850
Civil War and Reconstruction, 1850-1877
Development of the Industrial United States, 1865-1914
The Progressive Era, 1890-1914
Emergence of the United States as a World Power, 1890-1920
The '20's: Prosperity and Problems
Depression and The New Deal, 1929-1941
World War II and Post War United States, 1939-1961
Contemporary United States, 1961-Present
HB. HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE, CONCEPTS, AND PATTERNS
Students will develop historical knowledge of major events, people, and enduring themes in the United States, in Maine, and throughout world history.
SECONDARY GRADES
1. Demonstrate an understanding of the causes and effects of major events in United States history and their connection to both Maine and world history with emphasis on events after 1877, including, but not limited to:
Industrialization The Great Depression
The Cold War (and its ending) WWI and WWII
The Vietnam Era Civil Rights Movement
Watergate
2. Demonstrate an understanding of selected major events in ancient and modern world history and their connection to United States history.
3. Demonstrate an understanding of the lives of selected individuals who have had a major influence on history.
4. Demonstrate an understanding of enduring themes in history (e.g., conflict and cooperation, technology and innovation, freedom and justice).
5. Explain how different ways of knowing and believing have influenced human history and culture.
6. Describe how the basic ideas of various schools of philosophy have affected societies (e.g., rationalism, liberalism, idealism, conservationism).
7. Explain the benefits and conflicts resulting from encounters among cultures.
EXAMPLES
Describe how the development, expansion, and collapse of empires have affected the expansion of political power.
Give examples of former colonies and dependent states that have gained independence in the twentieth century and explain how they have addressed political issues related to independence.
HC. HISTORICAL INQUIRY, ANALYSIS, AND INTERPRETATION
Students will learn to evaluate resource material such as documents, artifacts, maps, artworks, and literature, and to make judgments about the perspectives of the authors and their credibility when interpreting current historical events.
SECONDARY GRADES
1. Evaluate and use historical materials to formulate historical hypotheses regarding a specific issue (e.g., space travel), and to make predictions about the future of the issue.
2. Examine and analyze primary and secondary sources in order to differentiate between historical facts and historical interpretations, and to support or reject historical hypotheses.
3. Compare competing historical narratives by contrasting different historians' choice of questions, use and choice of sources, perspectives, beliefs, and points of view in order to demonstrate how these factors contribute to different interpretations.
4. Compare and contrast the reliability of information received from multiple sources (e.g., newspapers, radio or TV, biography, historical narrative) to assess an historical issue.
In order to understand and analyze the relationships among people and environments, students will learn how to construct and interpret maps and how to use globes and other geographic tools to locate and derive information about people, places, regions, and environments. In an integrated way, students will study people and the physical characteristics and processes of the earth's surface to understand causes and effects, ecosystems, human behavior, patterns of population, interdependence, resources, cooperation and conflict, and how these are shaped by economic, political, and cultural systems.
GA. SKILLS AND TOOLS
Students will know how to construct and interpret maps and use globes and other geographic tools to locate and derive information about people, places, regions, and environments.
SECONDARY GRADES
1. Use mapping to answer complex geographic and environmental problems.
2. Appraise the ways in which maps reflect economic, social, and political policy decision making.
3. Understand how cultural and technological features can link or divide regions.
EXAMPLE
Use survey and map data which represent classmates' residential preferences, analyzing the factors which influence people's preferences about where to live and their decisions to move.
GB. HUMAN INTERACTION WITH ENVIRONMENTS
Students will understand and analyze the relationships among people and their physical environments.
SECONDARY GRADES
1. Explain factors which shape places and regions over time (e.g., physical and cultural factors).
2. Analyze the cultural characteristics that make specific regions of the world distinctive.
3. Analyze how technologies contribute to cultural sharing and separation, and identify examples of the spread of cultural traits.
4. Explain how conflict and cooperation among peoples contribute to the division of the earth's surface into distinctive cultural and political regions.
EXAMPLE
Compare two places with similar environments and dissimilar cultures (e.g., Manaus, Brazil and Kinshasa, Zaire).
Students will learn and apply basic economic concepts of production, distribution, and consumption to make decisions as effective participants in an international economy. Students will understand the development, principles, institutions, relationships to culture, and change over time of economic systems in the United States and elsewhere. Students will also understand how these concepts apply to individuals, households, businesses, governments, and societies which make decisions based on the availability of resources, as well as on costs and benefits of choices. These concepts also help to explain the patterns and results of trade, interdependence, and distribution of wealth in local, regional, national, and world economies.
EA. PERSONAL AND CONSUMER ECONOMICS
Students will understand that economic decisions are based on the availability of resources and the costs and benefits of choices.
SECONDARY GRADES
1. Conduct a cost benefit analysis of a personal or business decision.
2. Evaluate different forms of savings and investments for short- and long-term returns (e.g., stocks, bonds, money market funds).
3. Demonstrate an understanding of credit history and the positive and negative impacts that credit can have on an individual's financial life.
EXAMPLE
Given a fixed amount of "money" for investment purposes, create a portfolio of stocks, bonds, and other investments, trading to maximize profits over a fixed period of time.
EB. ECONOMIC SYSTEMS OF THE UNITED STATES
Students will understand the economic system of the United States, including its principles, development, and institutions.
SECONDARY GRADES
1. Describe the factors (i.e., physical, capital, technology, monetary resources) that impact the development and the distribution of a product.
2. Identify and analyze the role of government in the United States economic system (e.g., taxing, spending, setting interest rates, regulatory policy).
3. Explain the positive and the negative impacts of advertising techniques on consumer behavior.
4. Describe the full costs (including externalities) associated with the use of natural and human resources to produce economic goods and services (e.g., solar power versus nuclear power to provide electricity).
EXAMPLE
After an examination of the role of the Federal Reserve in regulating the money supply and interest rates, analyze economic scenarios in terms of likely actions by the Federal Reserve.
EC. COMPARATIVE SYSTEMS
Students will analyze how different economic systems function and change over time.
SECONDARY GRADES
1. Explain the impact of cultural values on economic decisions, using at least two examples.
2. Compare strengths and weaknesses of the market economy with other economic models, using broad societal goals such as freedom, equity, security, employment, stability, and economic growth.
EXAMPLE
Compare and contrast the Swedish economic system with that of the United States. Explain the differences in the role of government in each country (e.g., the different approaches to taxation and social policy).
ED. INTERNATIONAL TRADE AND GLOBAL INTERDEPENDENCE
Students will understand the patterns and results of international trade.
SECONDARY GRADES
1. Demonstrate an understanding that a nation has a competitive advantage when it can produce a product at a lower cost than its trading partner.
2. Evaluate the effect on international trade of domestic policies which either encourage or discourage exchange of goods and services (e.g., quotas, tariffs, skilled labor, stable government).