I that there is no one stop source out there on political parties... You really have to cobble together a lesson... Youth Leadership has some lessons on how to teach lessons, but I have found I have to do my own work here. For starters, I have to teach the history of American political parties. I used to do this by having the kids read the section in our Magruder's textbook and create a cartoon strip to work this out. It was a way to get kids to start thinking of political symbolism, text structure, and how to explain historical issues pictorially. I am sad to say, kids did struggle with this. It also, frankly, took too long. I am trying something new. I started off having kids read from the 12th ed of American Government Power & Purpose (a great resource I picked up from my AP Training). There is a great section that goes into more detail then the Magruder book. I then had students read the selection to find evidence that supported and refuted the following statement: The two major parties are coalitions of several factions and interest groups and recognize the importance of conducting campaigns that appeal to voters in the middle of the political spectrum, veering neither too far left nor too far right of the political center. They then walked up and wrote their strongest quote on the board. In my five classes, some kids got this and some kids did not. Some were able to target passages that detailed tenuous coalitions for Democrats made up of urban working class folks, small farmers, and mining interests from the west. We talked about how it was a flaw of the parties that these different interests were forced to find home in one party, despite the fact that they may not agree; and that this is a reason why people tend to vote the way the do, because they want to vote for a candidate who wins. They also found passages that described very polarized times in history; in which there were more political options then Rs and Ds, as well as situations in which we only had one party @ the founding of the nation. I was able to highlight that this was because there is no constitutional mandate for parties, etc... good and bad. One great question I had from our discussion was whether or not there would be a time where parties would cease to exist or be unnecessary... which was a great foray into the five functions of parties... and how it would be highly unlikely (despite the fact that we humans like to coagulate as a matter of nature)
Here is a brief rundown of the sites used and the questions asked... National Website Republican & Democrat State Website: Virginia Republican & Democrat Local Website: Fairfax County Republican & Democrat Answer the following questions: · What types of messages and actions are advocated at each of these levels of the party? Provide specific examples (nominating candidates, informing and activitating supporters, the bonding agent, governing, or the watchdog function) Do you feel that the messages from the examined websites are being directed at the party in the electorate, party in the government, or the party organization? Can you provide information that supports this assertion? Finally, to round out this class, we evaluated party websites at the national, state, and local level. We scoured these websites looking for information that exemplifies these five political functions of parties. I also wanted to highlight how sometimes local and state political issues are out of sync with national political agendas, and that is primarily because all the parties really care about is winning. See what I mean? You really gotta dig on this one! What do you do to cover these topics?
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Jen's bookshelf: nerdcation
I want to start by thanking Mr. Snowden and Mr. Greenwald for their uncompromising dedication to giving the NSA violations air time and transparency.
I wanted to share some of the most important things I have learned from this book bef...
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nerdcation
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nerdcation and to-read
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nerdcation and to-read
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nerdcation and to-read
AuthorI lovgov. LOVE IT! I love teaching government, learning about it, debating, discussing, asking questions about government. And not the standard boiler plate questions, but the hard ones that are NOT in the books. Archives
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