Teaching Public Issues in the Secondary School Classroom

These questions represent what
we mean by public issues--cases
in which a choice or decision affecting
the community must be made by citi-
zens or officials. We would emphasize
that the term public issue is not synon-
ymous with the term current events.
By public issues, we mean problems or
value dilemmas persisting throughout
history and across cultures. Each of
the questions listed above, although
linked to a particular time period, rep-
resents an issue that has recurred at
widely varying times and in diverse
places. One can think of numerous in-
stances in which citizens, or officials
acting in their stead, have faced ques-
tions regarding when governmental au-
thority should be challenged, whether
the movement of people from country
to country or region to region should
be regulated, what legitimate means are
available to public employees to express
dissatisfaction with working condi-
tions, or who is responsible for improv-
ing conditions experienced by the poor.
Few of the problems underlying current
issues are new.

Given this conception of public is-
sues, it should be clear that a public-is-
sues approach need not be confined to
any particular social studies course.
The approach can obviously be used in
a chronologically organized history
course, in which the teacher might fo-
cus study on several persisting issues
that typified each time period covered;
analogies from other time periods
could be drawn into each unit. In a re-
gional geography course, the teacher
might develop several persisting ques-
tions related to the relationship be-
tween people and the land; these ques-
tions could be used in studying each
world region covered in the course. In
a traditional civics class, students
would gain a more thorough-going
grasp of the dynamic nature of our po-
litical system by grappling with case
material related to such questions as
defining the public interest and clarify-
ing the government's role in protecting
that interest.

In any of these courses and in many
others, the analysis of enduring public
issues can serve as an antidote to the
broad, superficial coverage to which
many social studies teachers are "ad-
dicted" ( Newmann 1988). How does
an issues approach bring depth to the
curriculum? It focuses students' atten-
tion on narrative case studies dealing
with limited situations rather than on
sweeping sets of events. In general,
such cases describe single events, situa-
tions, decisions, or hypothetical possi-
bilities. They are essentially stories
that carry a mixture of factual infor-
mation and sentiment; they are often
selected to touch on matters of special
cultural or historical significance.

The objective of a case is to present
detailed information about a small
class of phenomena, assuming, of
course, that examination of a limited
incident or issue will yield conclusions
applicable to a more general class of
events. A case may, therefore, consist
of a story or vignette, a historical nar-
rative, research data, focused text ma-
terial, or an interpretive essay.

Cases can be found in a variety of
places--in the news media, in litera-

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