CNN Student News

Everyday CNN Student News releases ten minute news programs covering news stories around the world. To accompany your use of the video, CNN provides maps and discussion guides.

Social Studies Get the Short End of the Stick, Again

Chancellor Meryl Tisch and the New York State Board of Regents seemed determined to purge social studies and the study of history from the New York State elementary and middle school curriculum. First they dropped 5th and 8th grade social studies assessments for academic year 2010-2011 to help close a budget deficit.

Now, according to recommendations made by Deputy Commissioner Jon King, they want to integrate social studies and art into the England/Language Arts curriculum, which given testing pressure, means schools and students can kiss art and history goodbye.

Tisch and the Regents justify the attack of history and the social studies as part of their response to Race to the Top (the top of what is not clear). Because the federal government does not mandate history and social studies assessments and does not monitor the scores, New York is free to lower the standards in these areas to the level of Mississippi and Alabama -- unless the public loudly protests.

The purge of history would also be extended to the high schools, where under the latest proposal, students would no longer be required to take standardized Regents assessments in global history and United States history. Instead, they could chose from a menu of exams that would allow them to avoid history altogether. In addition, they are proposing that districts and students be charged for tests, which will mean students opt to take fewer exams and fewer subjects.

The New York State Council for the Social Studies and the Long Island Council for the Social Studieshave organized email and letter writing campaigns opposing the elimination of history and social studies (economics, geography, anthropology, and sociology) from the required curriculum. According to Brian Dowd, co-chair of the LICSS, "We recognize the need to prepare students for college and careers in the 21st century. Indeed we support the history reading and writing standards that have been articulated in the Common Core. However, we worry that the instructional foundations that prepare students to think critically and develop background knowledge about our shared history, geography, civics, and economics are being eroded." In addition, literacy is best learned through meaningful content that includes history, geography, civics, and economics.

Steve Goldberg, president of the National Council for the Social Studies and a New York State social studies teacher and supervisor, attended a meeting with Tisch and other members of the Board of Regents. He concluded, "After two hours of rhetoric by the regents and passionate, frustrated responses by the attendees, I reached the conclusion that New York, once a model for state wide social studies programs and assessments, had indeed plummeted and has joined the growing number of states where elementary social studies has been marginalized." He called for renewed pressure on the federal government to revise the Elementary and Secondary Act to mandate and assess instruction in history and the social studies. 

History Animated

History Animated provides animations of the American Revolution, the US Civil War, and the US Pacific Campaign in WWII. In each of the three series of animations you will see the animated movement of armies displayed on a map. Each animation is accompanied by captions describing the strategies of the armies as well as the results and consequences of each battle.

What is the earliest surviving system of laws?

The Code of Hammurabi is the earliest known example of a ruler publicly proclaiming to his people an entire set of laws, in an orderly arrangement, so that all of men might read and known what was required of them. Hammurabi was a ruler of ancient Babylon, probably from around 1795 B.C. to about 1750 B.C. His code was carved on a black stone monument, in 3,600 lines of cuneiform, standing eight feet high, and obviously intended for public view. This monument was discovered in 1901, not in Babylon, but in the Persian mountains, where it had probably been carried by some triumphant conqueror. It begins and ends with addresses to the gods and curses for anyone who neglects or destroys the law. It then goes on to list an organized code of laws and regulations for society. For example, a judge who makes a mistake in a case of law is to be expelled from his judgeship forever and issued a heavy fine. Any witness who gives false testimony is to be executed. All of the more serious crimes, in fact, are punishable by death -- even unintentional crimes. For instance, if a man builds a house badly, and it collapses and kills its owner, the builder is to be executed. If the owner's son was killed, then the builder's son is to be killed. Many believe the Code of Hammurabi or some similar code of laws to be the source of the Hebrew's edict of "an eye for an eye". The only escape for an accused person was to throw himself into "the river," the Euphrates. If the current carried him to shore alive, he was declared innocent. If he drowned, he was guilty. Although there were definitely earlier codes of law (their existence is even implied in Hammurabi's code), they have all disappeared -- leaving the Code of Hammurabi as the earliest surviving system of laws.

One Great Family

OneGreatFamily is a cooperative effort between you and the rest of the world.  It is an online genealogical service which allows everyone to combine their knowledge and data to build one huge, shared database. OneGreatFamily is more than a simple collection of different family trees.  Using breakthrough technology, OneGreatFamily is actually linking all of the family trees together into one great family. 

What this means to you:
With the world working together on one database, each individual is able to leverage the effort and research of all OneGreatFamily users rather than wasting time duplicating research that others have already done.

History Animated

HistoryAnimated. The site brings to life those dashed and dotted line maps to depict key naval and land battles using graphics, text, sound, and animations. So much more effective and so much more scalable than those static pull-down shade maps! Not every battle is included, but the folks at HistoryAnimated appear to be adding battles on a regular basis."
School Library Journal "If, like me, you have a few students and teachers who fancy themselves fill-in-the-blank war buffs, if the Civil War, World War II, and the Revolutionary War are part of your curriculum, you’re going to want to share 

National Archives Daily Document

National Archives Daily Document. Every day the RSS feed from the National Archives serves up a new primary document corresponding to that day in history. Along with the document teachers will find suggested classroom resources and suggested research links. The National Archives has also made available on Google Video hundreds of films from their records.