 This
section contains social studies topics which an adolescent 14 years of age might learn
while attending grade 8 at middle 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 8 Social Studies |
- United States History and Geography: Growth and Conflict
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Students in grade eight study the ideas, issues, and events
from the framing of the Constitution up to World War I, with
an emphasis on America's role in the war. After reviewing
the development of America's democratic institutions founded
on the Judeo-Christian heritage and English parliamentary
traditions, particularly the shaping of the Constitution,
students trace the development of American politics,
society, culture, and economy and relate them to the
emergence of major regional differences. They learn about
the challenges facing the new nation, with an emphasis on
the causes, course, and consequences of the Civil War. They
make connections between the rise of industrialization and
contemporary social and economic conditions.
- Students understand the major events
preceding the founding of the nation and relate their
significance to the development of American
constitutional democracy.
- Describe the relationship between
the moral and political ideas of the Great Awakening and
the development of revolutionary fervor.
- Analyze the philosophy of government
expressed in the Declaration of Independence, with an
emphasis on government as a means of securing individual
rights (e.g., key phrases such as "all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable Rights").
- Analyze how the American Revolution
affected other nations, especially France.
- Describe the nation's blend of civic
republicanism, classical liberal principles, and English
parliamentary traditions.
- Students analyze the political
principles underlying the U.S. Constitution and compare
the enumerated and implied powers of the federal
government.
- Discuss the significance of the
Magna Carta, the English
Bill of Rights, and the May-flower Compact.
- Analyze the Articles of
Confederation and the Constitution and the success of
each in implementing the ideals of the Declaration of
Independence.
- Evaluate the major debates that
occurred during the development of the Constitution and
their ultimate resolutions in such areas as shared power
among institutions, divided state-federal power,
slavery, the rights of individuals and states (later
addressed by the addition of the Bill of Rights), and
the status of American Indian nations under the commerce
clause.
- Describe the political philosophy
underpinning the Constitution as specified in the
Federalist Papers (authored by James Madison, Alexander
Hamilton, and John Jay) and the role of such leaders as
Madison, George Washington, Roger Sherman, Gouverneur Morris, and James Wilson in the writing
and ratification of the Constitution.
- Understand the significance of
Jefferson's Statute for Religious Freedom as a
forerunner of the First Amendment and the origins,
purpose, and differing views of the founding fathers on
the issue of the separation of church and state.
- Enumerate the powers of government
set forth in the Constitution and the fundamental
liberties ensured by the Bill of Rights.
- Describe the principles of
federalism, dual sovereignty, separation of powers,
checks and balances, the nature and purpose of majority
rule, and the ways in which the American idea of
constitutionalism preserves individual rights.
- Students understand the foundation
of the American political system and the ways in which
citizens participate in it.
- Analyze the principles and concepts
codified in state constitutions between 1777 and 1781
that created the context out of which American political
institutions and ideas developed.
- Explain how the ordinances of 1785
and 1787 privatized national resources and transferred
federally owned lands into private holdings, townships,
and states.
- Enumerate the advantages of a common
market among the states as foreseen in and protected by
the Constitution's clauses on interstate commerce,
common coinage, and full-faith and credit.
- Understand how the conflicts between
Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton resulted in the
emergence of two political parties (e.g., view of
foreign policy, Alien and Sedition Acts, economic
policy, National Bank, funding and assumption of the
revolutionary debt).
- Know the significance of domestic
resistance movements and ways in which the central
government responded to such movements (e.g., Shays'
Rebellion, the Whiskey Rebel-lion).
- Describe the basic law-making
process and how the Constitution provides numerous
opportunities for citizens to participate in the
political process and to monitor and influence
government (e.g., function of elections, political
parties, interest groups).
- Understand the functions and
responsibilities of a free press.
- Students analyze the aspirations and
ideals of the people of the new nation.
- Describe the country's physical
landscapes, political divisions, and territorial
expansion during the terms of the first four presidents.
- Explain the policy significance of
famous speeches (e.g., Washington's Farewell Address,
Jefferson's 1801 Inaugural Address, John Q. Adams's
Fourth of July 1821 Address).
- Analyze the rise of capitalism and
the economic problems and conflicts that accompanied it
(e.g., Jackson's opposition to the National Bank; early
decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court that reinforced the
sanctity of contracts and a capitalist economic system
of law).
- Discuss daily life, including
traditions in art, music, and literature, of early
national America (e.g., through writings by Washington
Irving, James Fenimore Cooper).
- Students analyze U.S. foreign policy
in the early Republic.
- Understand the political and
economic causes and consequences of the War of 1812 and
know the major battles, leaders, and events that led to
a final peace.
- Know the changing boundaries of the
United States and describe the relationships the country
had with its neighbors (current Mexico and Canada) and
Europe, including the influence of the Monroe Doctrine,
and how those relationships influenced westward
expansion and the Mexican-American War.
- Outline the major treaties with
American Indian nations during the administrations of
the first four presidents and the varying outcomes of
those treaties.
- Students analyze the divergent paths
of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s and
the challenges they faced, with emphasis on the
Northeast.
- Discuss the influence of
industrialization and technological developments on the
region, including human modification of the landscape
and how physical geography shaped human actions (e.g.,
growth of cities, deforestation, farming, mineral
extraction).
- Outline the physical obstacles to
and the economic and political factors involved in
building a network of roads, canals, and railroads
(e.g., Henry Clay's American System).
- List the reasons for the wave of
immigration from Northern Europe to the United States
and describe the growth in the number, size, and spatial
arrangements of cities (e.g., Irish immigrants and the
Great Irish Famine).
- Study the lives of black Americans
who gained freedom in the North and founded schools and
churches to advance their rights and communities.
- Trace the development of the
American education system from its earliest roots,
including the roles of religious and private schools and
Horace Mann's campaign for free public education and its
assimilating role in American culture.
- Examine the women's suffrage
movement (e.g., biographies, writings, and speeches of
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Margaret Fuller, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony).
- Identify common themes in American
art as well as transcendentalism and individualism
(e.g., writings about and by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry
David Thoreau, Herman Melville, Louisa May Alcott,
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow).
- Students analyze the divergent paths
of the American people in the South from 1800 to the
mid-1800s and the challenges they faced.
- Describe the development of the
agrarian economy in the South, identify the locations of
the cotton-producing states, and discuss the
significance of cotton and the cotton gin.
- Trace the origins and development of
slavery; its effects on black Americans and on the
region's political, social, religious, economic, and
cultural development; and identify the strategies that
were tried to both overturn and preserve it (e.g.,
through the writings and historical documents on Nat
Turner, Denmark Vesey).
- Examine the characteristics of white
Southern society and how the physical environment
influenced events and conditions prior to the Civil War.
- Compare the lives of and
opportunities for free blacks in the North with those of
free blacks in the South.
- Students analyze the divergent paths
of the American people in the West from 1800 to the
mid-1800s and the challenges they faced.
- Discuss the election of Andrew
Jackson as president in 1828, the importance of Jacksonian democracy, and his
actions as president (e.g., the spoils system, veto of the
National Bank, policy of Indian removal, opposition to the
Supreme Court).
- Describe the purpose, challenges,
and economic incentives associated with westward
expansion, including the concept of Manifest Destiny
(e.g., the Lewis and Clark expedition, accounts of the
removal of Indians, the Cherokees' "Trail of Tears,"
settlement of the Great Plains) and the territorial
acquisitions that spanned numerous decades.
- Describe the role of pioneer women
and the new status that western women achieved (e.g.,
Laura Ingalls Wilder, Annie Bidwell; slave women gaining
freedom in the West; Wyoming granting suffrage to women
in 1869).
- Examine the importance of the great
rivers and the struggle over water rights.
- Discuss Mexican settlements and
their locations, cultural traditions, attitudes toward
slavery, land-grant system, and economies.
- Describe the Texas War for
Independence and the Mexican-American War, including
territorial settlements, the aftermath of the wars, and
the effects the wars had on the lives of Americans,
including Mexican Americans today.
- Students analyze the early and
steady attempts to abolish slavery and to realize the
ideals of the Declaration of Independence.
- Describe the leaders of the movement
(e.g., John Quincy Adams and his proposed constitutional
amendment, John Brown and the armed resistance, Harriet
Tubman and the Underground Railroad, Benjamin Franklin,
Theodore Weld, William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick
Douglass).
- Discuss the abolition of slavery in
early state constitutions.
- Describe the significance of the
Northwest Ordinance in education and in the banning of
slavery in new states north of the Ohio River.
- Discuss the importance of the
slavery issue as raised by the annexation of Texas and
California's admission to the union as a free state
under the Compromise of 1850.
- Analyze the significance of the
States' Rights Doctrine, the Missouri Compromise (1820),
the Wilmot Proviso (1846), the Compromise of 1850, Henry
Clay's role in the Missouri Compromise and the
Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision (1857), and
the Lincoln-Douglas debates (1858).
- Describe the lives of free blacks
and the laws that limited their freedom and economic
opportunities.
- Students analyze the multiple
causes, key events, and complex consequences of the
Civil War.
- Compare the conflicting
interpretations of state and federal authority as
emphasized in the speeches and writings of statesmen
such as Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun.
- Trace the boundaries constituting
the North and the South, the geographical differences
between the two regions, and the differences between
agrarians and industrialists.
- Identify the constitutional issues
posed by the doctrine of nullification and secession and
the earliest origins of that doctrine.
- Discuss Abraham Lincoln's presidency
and his significant writings and speeches and their
relationship to the Declaration of Independence, such as
his "House Divided" speech (1858), Gettysburg Address
(1863), Emancipation Proclamation (1863), and inaugural
addresses (1861 and 1865).
- Study the views and lives of leaders
(e.g., Ulysses S. Grant, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee)
and soldiers on both sides of the war, including those
of black soldiers and regiments.
- Describe critical developments and
events in the war, including the major battles,
geographical advantages and obstacles, technological
advances, and General Lee's surrender at Appomattox.
- Explain how the war affected
combatants, civilians, the physical environment, and
future warfare.
- Students analyze the character and
lasting consequences of Reconstruction.
- List the original aims of
Reconstruction and describe its effects on the political
and social structures of different regions.
- Identify the push-pull factors in
the movement of former slaves to the cities in the North
and to the West and their differing experiences in those
regions (e.g., the experiences of Buffalo Soldiers).
- Understand the effects of the
Freedmen's Bureau and the restrictions placed on the
rights and opportunities of freedmen, including racial
segregation and "Jim Crow" laws.
- Trace the rise of the Ku Klux Klan
and describe the Klan's effects.
- Understand the Thirteenth,
Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution
and analyze their connection to Reconstruction.
- Students analyze the transformation
of the American economy and the changing social and
political conditions in the United States in response to
the Indus-trial Revolution.
- Trace patterns of agricultural and
industrial development as they relate to climate, use of
natural resources, markets, and trade and locate such
development on a map.
- Identify the reasons for the
development of federal Indian policy and the wars with
American Indians and their relationship to agricultural
development and industrialization.
- Explain how states and the federal
government encouraged business expansion through
tariffs, banking, land grants, and subsidies.
- Discuss entrepreneurs,
industrialists, and bankers in politics, commerce, and
industry (e.g., Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller,
Leland Stanford).
- Examine the location and effects of
urbanization, renewed immigration, and industrialization
(e.g., the effects on social fabric of cities, wealth
and economic opportunity, the conservation movement).
- Discuss child labor, working
conditions, and laissez-faire policies toward big
business and examine the labor movement, including its
leaders (e.g., Samuel Gompers), its demand for
collective bargaining, and its strikes and protests over
labor conditions.
- Identify the new sources of
large-scale immigration and the contributions of
immigrants to the building of cities and the economy;
explain the ways in which new social and economic
patterns encouraged assimilation of newcomers into the
mainstream amidst growing cultural diversity; and
discuss the new wave of nativism.
- Identify the characteristics and
impact of Grangerism and
Populism.
- Name the significant inventors and
their inventions and identify how they improved the
quality of life (e.g., Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham
Bell, Orville and Wilbur Wright).
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