 This
section contains social studies topics which a young adult 18 years of age might learn
while attending grade 12 at high school. Curriculum based on
CA, NY, and CCSSI.
Note: the topics on this page will eventually be
split into individual pages. (Rome was not built in a day) |
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Curriculum -
Grade 12 Social Studies |
- Principles of American Democracy and Economics
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Students in grade twelve pursue a deeper understanding of
the institutions of American government. They compare
systems of government in the world today and analyze the
history and changing interpretations of the Constitution,
the Bill of Rights, and the current state of the
legislative, executive, and judiciary branches of
government. An emphasis is placed on analyzing the
relationship among federal, state, and local governments,
with particular attention paid to important historical
documents such as the Federalist Papers. These standards
represent the culmination of civic literacy as students
prepare to vote, participate in community activities, and
assume the responsibilities of citizenship.
In addition to studying government in grade twelve, students
will also master fundamental economic concepts, applying the
tools (graphs, statistics, equations) from other subject
areas to the understanding of operations and institutions of
economic systems. Studied in a historic context are the
basic economic principles of micro- and macroeconomics,
international economics, comparative economic systems,
measurement, and methods.
- Principles of American Democracy
- Students explain the fundamental
principles and moral values of American democracy as
expressed in the U.S. Constitution and other essential
documents of American democracy.
- Analyze the influence of ancient
Greek, Roman, English, and leading European political
thinkers such as John Locke, Charles-Louis Montesquieu, Niccolò Machiavelli, and William
Blackstone on the development of American government.
- Discuss the character of American
democracy and its promise and perils as articulated by
Alexis de Tocqueville.
- Explain how the U.S. Constitution
reflects a balance between the classical republican
concern with promotion of the public good and the
classical liberal concern with protecting individual
rights; and discuss how the basic premises of liberal
constitutionalism and democracy are joined in the
Declaration of Independence as "self-evident truths."
- Explain how the Founding Fathers'
realistic view of human nature led directly to the
establishment of a constitutional system that limited
the power of the governors and the governed as
articulated in the Federalist Papers.
- Describe the systems of separated
and shared powers, the role of organized interests
(Federalist Paper Number 10), checks and balances
(Federalist Paper Number 51), the importance of an
independent judiciary (Federalist Paper Number 78),
enumerated powers, rule of law, federalism, and civilian
control of the military.
6. Understand that the Bill of Rights limits the powers of
the federal government and state governments.
- Students evaluate and take and
defend positions on the scope and limits of rights and
obligations as democratic citizens, the relationships
among them, and how they are secured.
- Discuss the meaning and importance
of each of the rights guaranteed under the Bill of
Rights and how each is secured (e.g., freedom of
religion, speech, press, assembly, petition, privacy).
- Explain how economic rights are
secured and their importance to the individual and to
society (e.g., the right to acquire, use, transfer, and
dispose of property; right to choose one's work; right
to join or not join labor unions; copyright and patent).
- Discuss the individual's legal
obligations to obey the law, serve as a juror, and pay
taxes.
- Understand the obligations of
civic-mindedness, including voting, being informed on
civic issues, volunteering and performing public
service, and serving in the military or alternative
service.
- Describe the reciprocity between
rights and obligations; that is, why enjoyment of one's
rights entails respect for the rights of others.
- Explain how one becomes a citizen of
the United States, including the process of
naturalization (e.g., literacy, language, and other
requirements).
- Students evaluate and take and
defend positions on what the fundamental values and
principles of civil society are (i.e., the autonomous
sphere of voluntary personal, social, and economic
relations that are not part of government), their
interdependence, and the meaning and importance of those
values and principles for a free society.
- Explain how civil society provides
opportunities for individuals to associate for social,
cultural, religious, economic, and political purposes.
- Explain how civil society makes it
possible for people, individually or in association with
others, to bring their influence to bear on government
in ways other than voting and elections.
- Discuss the historical role of
religion and religious diversity.
- Compare the relationship of
government and civil society in constitutional
democracies to the relationship of government and civil
society in authoritarian and totalitarian regimes.
- Students analyze the unique roles
and responsibilities of the three branches of government
as established by the U.S. Constitution.
- Discuss Article I of the
Constitution as it relates to the legislative branch,
including eligibility for office and lengths of terms of
representatives and senators; election to office; the
roles of the House and Senate in impeachment
proceedings; the role of the vice president; the
enumerated legislative powers; and the process by which
a bill becomes a law.
- Explain the process through which
the Constitution can be amended.
- Identify their current
representatives in the legislative branch of the
national government.
- Discuss Article II of the
Constitution as it relates to the executive branch,
including eligibility for office and length of term,
election to and removal from office, the oath of office,
and the enumerated executive powers.
- Discuss Article III of the
Constitution as it relates to judicial power, including
the length of terms of judges and the jurisdiction of
the Supreme Court.
- Explain the processes of selection
and confirmation of Supreme Court justices.
- Students summarize landmark U.S.
Supreme Court interpretations of the Constitution and
its amendments.
- Understand the changing
interpretations of the Bill of Rights over time,
including interpretations of the basic freedoms
(religion, speech, press, petition, and assembly)
articulated in the First Amendment and the due process
and equal-protection-of-the-law clauses of the
Fourteenth Amendment.
- Analyze judicial activism and
judicial restraint and the effects of each policy over
the decades (e.g., the Warren and Rehnquist courts).
- Evaluate the effects of the Court's
interpretations of the Constitution in Marbury v. Madison, McCulloch v.
Maryland, and United States v. Nixon, with emphasis on the
arguments espoused by each side in these cases.
- Explain the controversies that have
resulted over changing interpretations of civil rights,
including those in Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown v. Board of Education, Miranda v.
Arizona, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke,
Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena, and United States v.
Virginia (VMI).
- Students evaluate issues regarding
campaigns for national, state, and local elective
offices.
- Analyze the origin, development, and
role of political parties, noting those occasional
periods in which there was only one major party or were
more than two major parties.
- Discuss the history of the
nomination process for presidential candidates and the
increasing importance of primaries in general elections.
- Evaluate the roles of polls,
campaign advertising, and the controversies over
campaign funding.
- Describe the means that citizens use
to participate in the political process (e.g., voting,
campaigning, lobbying, filing a legal challenge,
demonstrating, petitioning, picketing, running for
political office).
- Discuss the features of direct
democracy in numerous states (e.g., the process of
referendums, recall elections).
- Analyze trends in voter turnout; the
causes and effects of reapportionment and redistricting,
with special attention to spatial districting and the
rights of minorities; and the function of the Electoral
College.
- Students analyze and compare the
powers and procedures of the national, state, tribal,
and local governments.
- Explain how conflicts between levels
of government and branches of government are resolved.
- Identify the major responsibilities
and sources of revenue for state and local governments.
- Discuss reserved powers and
concurrent powers of state governments.
- Discuss the Ninth and Tenth
Amendments and interpretations of the extent of the
federal government's power.
- Explain how public policy is formed,
including the setting of the public agenda and
implementation of it through regulations and executive
orders.
- Compare the processes of lawmaking
at each of the three levels of government, including the
role of lobbying and the media.
- Identify the organization and
jurisdiction of federal, state, and local (e.g.,
California) courts and the interrelationships among
them.
- Understand the scope of presidential
power and decision making through examination of case
studies such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, passage of
Great Society legislation, War Powers Act, Gulf War, and
Bosnia.
- Students evaluate and take and
defend positions on the influence of the media on
American political life.
- Discuss the meaning and importance
of a free and responsible press.
- Describe the roles of broadcast,
print, and electronic media, including the Internet, as
means of communication in American politics.
- Explain how public officials use the
media to communicate with the citizenry and to shape
public opinion.
- Students analyze the origins,
characteristics, and development of different political
systems across time, with emphasis on the quest for
political democracy, its advances, and its obstacles.
- Explain how the different
philosophies and structures of feudalism, mercantilism,
socialism, fascism, communism, monarchies, parliamentary
systems, and constitutional liberal democracies
influence economic policies, social welfare policies,
and human rights practices.
- Compare the various ways in which
power is distributed, shared, and limited in systems of
shared powers and in parliamentary systems, including
the influence and role of parliamentary leaders (e.g.,
William Gladstone, Margaret Thatcher).
- Discuss the advantages and
disadvantages of federal, con federal, and unitary
systems of government.
- Describe for at least two countries
the consequences of conditions that gave rise to
tyrannies during certain periods (e.g., Italy, Japan,
Haiti, Nigeria, Cambodia).
- Identify the forms of illegitimate
power that twentieth-century African, Asian, and Latin
American dictators used to gain and hold office and the
conditions and interests that supported them.
- Identify the ideologies, causes,
stages, and outcomes of major Mexican, Central American,
and South American revolutions in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries.
- Describe the ideologies that give
rise to Communism, methods of maintaining control, and
the movements to overthrow such governments in
Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland, including the roles
of individuals (e.g., Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Pope John
Paul II, Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel).
- Identify the successes of relatively
new democracies in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and
the ideas, leaders, and general societal conditions that
have launched and sustained, or failed to sustain, them.
- Students formulate questions about
and defend their analyses of tensions within our
constitutional democracy and the importance of
maintaining a balance between the following concepts:
majority rule and individual rights; liberty and
equality; state and national authority in a federal
system; civil disobedience and the rule of law; freedom
of the press and the right to a fair trial; the
relationship of religion and government.
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- Principles
of Economics
- Students understand common economic
terms and concepts and economic reasoning.
- Examine the causal relationship
between scarcity and the need for choices.
- Explain opportunity cost and
marginal benefit and marginal cost.
- Identify the difference between
monetary and non monetary incentives and how changes in
incentives cause changes in behavior.
- Evaluate the role of private
property as an incentive in conserving and improving
scarce resources, including renewable and nonrenewable
natural resources.
- Analyze the role of a market economy
in establishing and preserving political and personal
liberty (e.g., through the works of Adam Smith).
- Students analyze the elements of
America's market economy in a global setting.
- Understand the relationship of the
concept of incentives to the law of supply and the
relationship of the concept of incentives and
substitutes to the law of demand.
- Discuss the effects of changes in
supply and/ or demand on the relative scarcity, price,
and quantity of particular products.
- Explain the roles of property
rights, competition, and profit in a market economy.
- Explain how prices reflect the
relative scarcity of goods and services and perform the allocative function in a market
economy.
- Understand the process by which
competition among buyers and sellers determines a market
price.
- Describe the effect of price
controls on buyers and sellers.
- Analyze how domestic and
international competition in a market economy affects
goods and services produced and the quality, quantity,
and price of those products.
- Explain the role of profit as the
incentive to entrepreneurs in a market economy.
- Describe the functions of the
financial markets.
- Discuss the economic principles that
guide the location of agricultural production and
industry and the spatial distribution of transportation
and retail facilities.
- Students analyze the influence of
the federal government on the American economy.
- Understand how the role of
government in a market economy often includes providing
for national defense, addressing environmental concerns,
defining and enforcing property rights, attempting to
make markets more competitive, and protecting consumers'
rights.
- Identify the factors that may cause
the costs of government actions to outweigh the
benefits.
- Describe the aims of government
fiscal policies (taxation, borrowing, spending) and
their influence on production, employment, and price
levels.
- Understand the aims and tools of
monetary policy and their influence on economic activity
(e.g., the Federal Reserve).
- Students analyze the elements of the
U.S. labor market in a global setting.
- Understand the operations of the
labor market, including the circumstances surrounding
the establishment of principal American labor unions,
procedures that unions use to gain benefits for their
members, the effects of unionization, the mini-mum wage,
and unemployment insurance.
- Describe the current economy and
labor market, including the types of goods and services
produced, the types of skills workers need, the effects
of rapid technological change, and the impact of
international competition.
- Discuss wage differences among jobs
and professions, using the laws of demand and supply and
the concept of productivity.
- Explain the effects of international
mobility of capital and labor on the U.S. economy.
- Students analyze the aggregate
economic behavior of the U.S. economy.
- Distinguish between nominal and real
data.
- Define, calculate, and explain the
significance of an unemployment rate, the number of new
jobs created monthly, an inflation or deflation rate,
and a rate of economic growth.
- Distinguish between short-term and
long-term interest rates and explain their relative
significance.
- Students analyze issues of
international trade and explain how the U.S. economy
affects, and is affected by, economic forces beyond the
United States's borders.
- Identify the gains in consumption
and production efficiency from trade, with emphasis on
the main products and changing geographic patterns of
twentieth-century trade among countries in the Western
Hemisphere.
- Compare the reasons for and the
effects of trade restrictions during the Great
Depression compared with present-day arguments among
labor, business, and political leaders over the effects
of free trade on the economic and social interests of
various groups of Americans.
- Understand the changing role of
international political borders and territorial
sovereignty in a global economy.
- Explain foreign exchange, the manner
in which exchange rates are determined, and the effects
of the dollar's gaining (or losing) value relative to
other currencies.
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