[Note: This posting completes this blog’s report on
the development of a civics unit of study.
The unit is meant to direct students in their understanding of a local
political/governmental issue. The issue
is the opioid epidemic. Writer wants to
express gratitude to Wikipedia for identifying the bulk of the research this
blog has used in the development of this unit.[1]]
This posting will
serve as a transition from reporting, in real time, the development of one unit
of study to another. As indicated above
– and in a long string of previous postings – the unit being completed targeted
the opioid epidemic. That development
took various steps in its progression.
The
plan consisted of first choosing an issue area that affects a local area within
the polity – the neighborhood. Then the
development determined where in the course it should be situated. In terms of a local issue, progressing from
the immediate and local toward the outer reaches of students’ civic interests,
this unit is situated early in the course.
For example, the assumed course places
the “opioid” unit as probably the third unit.
To remind a recurring reader – one who follows this blog – it has been suggested
that a civics course, one guided by federation theory, should have students
study issues that help advance social capital and civic humanism.
This is what this blog reported in a
previous posting:
To implement this course, one needs
to forget the prevailing textbooks[2]
and the structure that these textbooks outline and [instead] develop a course
entirely on social capital [and civic humanism] priorities. To begin with, each element of a society,
from the most basic to the most complicated, becomes a potential source of
content. From the individual – the most
basic, but still complicated – to international arrangements such as the UN can
be included.
A list of these elements and an
accompanying “social capital” [and “civic humanist”] issues is included in the following:
•
The
individual – short term interests vs. long term interests
•
The
family – the effects of divorce
•
The
neighborhood – responsibilities toward problem children
•
A
small business – treatment of employees
•
A
labor association (such as a union) – efficiency and quality issues vs. worker
interests
•
A
large corporation – product safety
•
A
local government (either city or county) – zoning or racial/ethnic divisions
•
Law
enforcement agency – judicial rights applicable to an accused
•
White
House – leadership that advances social capital
•
Congress
– the extent that money (donations) is influential
•
The
courts – the role of interpreting constitutional principles as expressions of
social capital
•
Society
during wartime – special demands on citizenship
•
International
associations – levels of interdependence between nations
Such a course of study would be
comprised of thirteen units to be covered in an eighteen-week semester at the
high school level. Middle school civics
courses last the entire academic year, so the list can be longer, or each item
can demand more time (or a combination of the two).[3]
A third unit would
correspond to the “neighborhood” unit in the above listing. Of course, an “opioid” concern replaces the
above identified issue, “responsibilities toward problem children.”
On another matter, in a previous
posting, this blog promised that the listing of all factoids and insights, previously
identified in prior postings, would be collected in one extra, posting
site. The resulting list takes up
eighteen pages, so the posting option on this blog seems undoable. So instead, the listing appears in a PDF type
posting.
Interested
readers can click to the online site identified in the footnote below.[4] That collection of factoids and insights were
made up of researched information and the sources of that information is
identified by accompanying footnotes.
Interested parties that wish to access those sources can merely click on
those sites.
Those
bits of information are arranged according to an aspect of the opioid
crisis. Those aspects are: updating information of the epidemic history,
effects on the individual, counter measures, production and distribution, demographics,
and governmental reactions. So, for
example, factoids regarding heroin appear as follows:
Factoids relating to current updating of historical
account:
Concerning heroin –
* Of those who misuse prescribed opioids, 4 to 6 percent
“graduate” to heroin and 80 percent of those, who use heroin, previously
misused prescription opioids.
* Men are significantly more likely to use heroin;
* Between 2012 and 2015, deaths due to heroin-use were
more numerous than deaths due to other opioids even though among women, deaths
were higher due to opioid medications;
* The last decade or so has seen significant increases in
heroin use. Those numbers include an increase from an estimated 374,000
Americans using heroin in the years 2002-2005 to 607,000 in the years
2009-2011.4 By 2014, as a reflection of a leveling-off progression, the number
was estimated to still be over half a million.
In turn, each of these entries are properly footnoted and
their sources identified.
With
that effort completed, it is time to move on.
This blog will develop another unit of study. This will be a third unit so developed. The first one covered the issue of foreign
trade and how that trade has affected the availability of jobs here in the US. This blog developed that unit as one that
would appear at the end of a course of study.
The “trade” issue would replace (or develop further) the “levels of interdependence between
nations” in the identified course of study above.
What
is visualized here is that a unit on jurisprudence can be a third developed
unit and can be situated with a “national” context – “the courts.” More specifically, the federalist target will
be three sets of jurisprudential concepts: strict liability vs. negligence, malfeasance
vs. non feasance, reasonable standard vs. causation. All three are central concepts in the practice
of tort law. Again, this will be the
organizing aim for a long string of postings to come.
As
with the other two units, this newer plan will be to identify a history
(aligning this effort with the “historical dialogue-to-action” strategy), to cull
out those aspects that define the current social/political condition that
affect citizens in this area of interest, and develop lesson-scenarios that
address, individually, each identified aspect.
And it will be done, as with the other two, in real time.
That
means, the reader should not be surprised if its development backtracks at
times. It also points out that this
development should not be equated to what a typical teacher can do. He/she does not have the luxury of spending
weeks to develop the units that comprise his/her courses. That is especially true if the textbook takes
a backseat – as suggested here – in defining what is to be taught.
[1] The writer
also wants to state that where possible, he has checked the sources and has at
times added to the listed research.
[2] The prevailing
textbooks can be maintained, but as reference books that contain much, if not
all, of the structural information a student would use in carrying out
inquiries this course of study would have students perform.
[3] The previous posting is entitled “Social Capital as
a Fundamental Commitment,” February 10, 2017.
[4] The site for the PDF type document is https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=CED163627385DD3C!11635&ithint=file%2cdocx&app=Word&authkey=!AFhwqIF3ZhONVK8
.
