Social Education
Volume 60 Number 6
October 1996

Votes & Citizenship

Teaching Ideas

What Makes a Great President?
Rochelle Balkam
Great leadership in a democracy depends not only upon leaders but those who are led.

Voting Isn’t Enough
G. Dale Greenawald
Citizenship education must go beyond the “hows and whys” of voting to explore leadership, conflicts over power, and the issues at stake in elections.

Voting Is Essential
Rick Blasing
Helping students to formulate their own political opinions can stimulate interest in voting.

The 1965 Alabama Literacy Test
Kids Voting USA
The importance of the vote becomes clearer in a lesson on how African-American citizens were once deprived of suffrage.

Articles

Kids Voting USA: From Classroom to Dinner Table to the Polls
Syd Golston
Interest in elections is piqued when students of all ages cast ballots at real polling precincts.

Investigating Controversial Issues at Election Time:
Political Socialization Research
Carole L. Hahn
An open climate in social studies classrooms may be a good predictor of students’ future political participation.

The Political Trade-offs of Trade
William Bosshardt
The debates over free trade and economic sanctions involve political judgments and will not be resolved easily.

Social Barriers to Voting
Pauline Schneider
There are many causes, but only one result, of not voting: your ideas don’t get represented.

The Keys to the White House:
Who Will be the Next American President?
Allan J. Lichtman
Challengers beware: no incumbent who meets the criteria for survival in this prediction scale has lost the popular vote for President.

A Hundred Years Ago:
Crusaders vs. Conservatives in a Furious Campaign
A Social Education Special Feature
The political landscape of the 1896 election is easily recognizable. There was a bitter debate on the economy, the campaign swallowed gobs of money, and charges of special interests filled the air.

Getting Into Issues: Good Government
William H. Woodwell, Jr.
Campaign finance reform is an issue whose time has come—and come—and come.

Social Issues and Voting Behavior
Scott Piroth
More votes are based on partisan identification than people realize—even the voters themselves.

Instructional Technology

Internet: Teaching About the 1996 Elections with
the World Wide Web
C. Frederick Risinger
The best Web sites for election-oriented materials are selected.

Multimedia Products for U.S. History
Charles S. White
New products that support the U.S. history curriculum are examined.

Video Rewind
Round Rock Independent School District, Austin, Texas
A timely look at women in the U.S. space program is among the new videos reviewed.