Der Landesbildungsserver Baden-Württemberg ist die Standard-Plattform Baden-Württembergs für alles im Umfeld Schule.
The german "Educations-Server" of Baden-Württemberg provides a great variety of educational stuff. Well tested and approved for the teachers every-day-life.
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After wearing black armbands to school in protest of the Vietnam War, three students -- two of them siblings -- were suspended by the Des Moines Independent Community School District for disrupting learning. The parents of the children sued the school for violating the children's right to free speech. The landmark Supreme Court Case Tinker v. Des Moines determined it was a First Amendment violation for public schools to punish students for expressing themselves in certain circumstances. This lesson uses expert analysis, perspectives from the Tinkers, oral arguments, and archival video to explore the case and the legacy of the ruling.

The 1936 presidential election proved a decisive battle, not only in shaping the nation's political future but for the future of opinion polling. The Literary Digest, the venerable magazine founded in 1890, had correctly predicted the outcomes of the 1916, 1920, 1924, 1928, and 1932 elections by conducting polls. These polls were a lucrative venture for the magazine: readers liked them; newspapers played them up; and each "ballot" included a subscription blank. The 1936 postal card poll claimed to have asked one forth of the nation's voters which candidate they intended to vote for. In Literary Digest 's October 31 issue, based on more than 2,000,000 returned post cards, it issued its prediction: Republican presidential candidate Alfred Landon would win 57 percent of the popular vote and 370 electoral votes.

The emotional and highly publicized case of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti became a touchstone and rallying cry for American radicals. In 1920 the two Italian immigrants were accused of murder and although the evidence against them was flimsy, they were readily convicted, in large part because they were immigrants and anarchists. They were executed, despite international protests, on August 23, 1927. Aldino Felicani, printer and publisher of the anarchist paper Controcorrente, was a long-time acquaintance of Sacco and Vanzetti; in 1920 he organized the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee. In this interview with Dean Albertson, recorded in 1954, Felicani recalled his relationships with the accused men and his work on the defense committee. His story gave a sense of the emotion of the last days of Sacco and Vanzetti.

This collection uses primary sources to explore leaders of Latin American revolutions. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) on June 25, 1938, the last major piece of New Deal legislation. The act outlawed child labor and guaranteed a minimum wage of 40 cents an hour and a maximum work week of 40 hours, benefiting more than 22 million workers. Although the law helped establish a precedent for the Federal regulation of work conditions, conservative forces in Congress effectively exempted many workers, such as waiters, cooks, janitors, farm workers, and domestics, from its coverage. In October 1949, President Harry S. Truman signed into law the Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1949, raising the minimum wage to 75 cents hour and extending coverage, but still leaving many workers unprotected. In the following statement to the 1949 Senate subcommittee on FLSA amendments, an advocacy group representing power laundries warned that such legislation would result in a "ruinous effect" on the industry.

In order to challenge the emphasis on extreme economic individualism espoused by Gilded Age industrialists and laissez-faire theorists, labor writers drew on diverse historical and religious traditions. William Law, writing in the Detroit Labor Leaf in 1886, cited a variety of historical events, starting with the Magna Carta, to argue for collective organization. Law reminded his readers that some of history's most notable changes came about only as a result of organized effort on the part of the masses.

This is the government website for the SEC - US Securities and Exchange Commission.  The original documents for securities laws can be accessed from this page.  These laws include:
Securities Act of 1933Securities Exchange Act of 1934Trust Indenture Act of 1939Investment Company Act of 1940Investment Advisers Act of 1940Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act of 2012
This is helpful for business law classes that include business ethics.  The Sarbones-Oxley Act is a great resource when studying Enron and other related ethical scandals of that time.  The full text can be used for close reading and digital scavenger hunts.

In the war for independence, the life of a common soldier was a rough one. Soldiers served relatively short periods in state militias or longer periods in the Continental Army, raised by Congress. About two hundred thousand men enlisted for one period or another. Militias supplied the greatest number of soldiers, comprised of farmers, artisans, and some professionals. The Continental Congress recruited the young and those with fewer resources, such as apprentices or laborers. Some enlisted voluntarily while others were drafted; the more affluent hired paid substitutes. All faced war's hardships of severe food shortages, discomfort, low morale, and danger. Joseph Plumb Martin, born in western Massachusetts, joined the militia in 1776 before his 16th birthday and served in the Continental Army from 1777 to 1783. In 1830, he wrote a colorful portrayal of the life of a common soldier, Some of the Adventures, Dangers and Sufferings of a Revolutionary Soldier. In this excerpt, Plumb described the British surrender at Yorktown in October 1781.

The history of American higher education reflects a long struggle between faculty and the business and political interests typically assembled on the governing boards of universities and colleges. By World War I, university and college faculty had become professionalized, governed by organized bodies that set general standards for promotion and tenure as well as for ethical conduct and for accuracy in research and scholarship. Assisted by organizations like the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), faculty had acquired a substantial degree of autonomy and authority over the conduct of their own business. But academics remained subject to both economic and political pressures, pressures that exploded during World War I era loyalty crusades. Thorstein Veblen's 1918 essay "The Higher Learning" accused American academics of capitulating to business. Veblen, a noted economist and social critic, argued that the pursuit of knowledge should answer to higher priorities than the pursuit of money, and that it demanded freedom of expression and thought. In American higher learning, Veblen thought, the interests of politics were so like the interests of business that the two had merged, leaving professors doubly vulnerable to intimidation.

With depression looming as a continual threat to the U.S. economy in the late 19th century, Americans debated how the government should respond to hard times--a question still unanswered today. Manufacturers--then as now--usually took the position that government should not interfere with the workings of the "free market." When J. H. Walker, a shoe manufacturer from Worcester, Massachusetts, testified in 1878 before a congressional committee investigating "the causes of the general depression in labor and business," he argued simply that the government should do nothing at all for the vast army of unemployed. "Leave them alone; that is the remedy," he declared.

The Taft-Hartley Act, passed in 1947, symbolized the anti-labor climate of postwar America. The act expanded the power of employers and the government to prevent union organizing and strikes, and made it difficult for unions to take industrial action. The most difficult aspect of the bill for many unions to swallow required labor leaders to declare themselves to be non-Communist if they wanted to participate in NLRB elections. While many union members, like Leon Sverdlove of the Jewelry Workers union in New York, resented having to divulge their political views, they accepted the act's requirement in order to protect what union rights they had left. As Sverdlove found, however, even accepting the act's dictates did not protect unions and their members from accusations of communism, and many unions and workers suspected as communist sympathizers were forced out of organized labor.

Despite major cultural, legal, and medical impediments the use of birth control, including abortion, by American women was widespread at the turn of the century. In their quest to control unwanted pregnancies, American women could be surprisingly resourceful in the methods they used. In this audio excerpt from a 1974 interview with historian Sherna Gluck, Miriam Allen deFord described methods of birth control in vogue in the 1910s, including spermicides, douches, the Dutch pessary (an early diaphragm), and the use of ergot pills to induce abortion.

The presidential election of 1824 represents a watershed in American politics. The collapse of the Federalist Party and the illness of the "official candidate" of the Democratic-Republicans led to a slate of candidates who were all Democratic-Republicans. This led to the end of the Congressional Caucus system for nominating candidates, and eventually, the development of a new two-party system in the United States. In the election, Andrew Jackson won a plurality of both the popular and electoral vote. But John Quincy Adams became president. Four crucial elements of our election system were highlighted in the election of 1824: the nomination of candidates, the popular election of electors, the Electoral College, and the election of the president in the House when no candidate receives a majority in the Electoral College.
Why was the election of 1824 thrown to the House of Representatives?
What constitutional provisions applied?
What was the result?
Explain why the election of 1824 was decided in the House of Representatives.
Summarize relevant portions of the Constitution on presidential election procedures.

"However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."

—President George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796.

Fear of factionalism and political parties was deeply rooted in Anglo-American political culture before the American Revolution. Leaders such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson hoped their new government, founded on the Constitution, would be motivated instead by a common intent, a unity. Though dominant, these sentiments were not held by all Americans. A delegate to the Massachusetts ratifying convention, for example, asserted that “competition of interest…between those persons who are in and those who are out office, will ever form one important check to the abuse of power in our representatives.” (Quoted in Hofstader, p. 36) Hamilton argued from a slightly different perspective in Federalist #70: “In the legislature, promptitude of decision is oftener an evil than a benefit. The differences of opinion, and the jarrings of parties in that department of the government, though they may sometimes obstruct salutary plans, yet often promote deliberation and circumspection, and serve to check excesses in the majority.”

Political parties did form in the United States and had their beginnings in Washington's cabinet. Jefferson, who resigned as Washington's Secretary of State in 1793, and James Madison, who first began to oppose the policies of Alexander Hamilton while a member of the House of Representatives, soon united, as Jefferson wrote in his will, "in the same principles and pursuits of what [they] deemed for the greatest good of our country" (on the Thomas Jefferson Digital Archive, a link from the EDSITEment-reviewed website The American President). Together, they were central to the creation of the first political party in the United States. In the meantime, those who supported Hamilton began to organize their own party, thus leading to the establishment of a two-party system.
What are the chief characteristics of political opposition in a democracy?
What are the essential elements of an organized political party?
Are political parties necessary for the advancement of democracy?
Analyze the factors that to the development of the Federalists and Democratic-Republicans.
Evaluate the immediate effect of the establishment of political parties in the U.S.

Fear of factionalism and political parties was deeply rooted in Anglo-American political culture before the American Revolution. Leaders such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson hoped their new government, founded on the Constitution, would be motivated instead by a common intent, a unity. Though dominant, these sentiments were not held by all Americans. A delegate to the Massachusetts ratifying convention, for example, asserted that “competition of interest … between those persons who are in and those who are out office, will ever form one important check to the abuse of power in our representatives.” (Quoted in Hofstader, p. 36) Hamilton argued from a slightly different perspective in Federalist #70: “In the legislature, promptitude of decision is oftener an evil than a benefit. The differences of opinion, and the jarrings of parties in that department of the government, though they may sometimes obstruct salutary plans, yet often promote deliberation and circumspection, and serve to check excesses in the majority.”
What are the essential elements of an organized political party?
What differences in philosophy led to the development of the Federalist and Democratic-Republican parties?
Evaluate the factors that led to the development of the Federalists and Democratic-Republicans.
Analyze the events that transpired during the turn of the 19th century to evaluate their impact on the advancement of democracy in the U.S.

When the delegates to the Philadelphia Convention convened in May of 1787 to recommend amendments to the Articles of Confederation, one of the first issues they addressed was the plan for representation in Congress. This question was especially contentious, and kept the delegates embroiled in debate and disagreement for over six weeks. One group of delegates believed that they were not authorized to change the "federal" representational scheme under the Articles of Confederation, according to which the states were equally represented in a unicameral Congress by delegates appointed by the state legislatures. Another group of delegates believed that the current scheme of representation under the Articles of Confederation was flawed and had to be replaced with a better one—a "national" one. The question was finally resolved by the Connecticut Compromise, which resulted in a system of representation that would be "partly national, partly federal," involving a combination of the two kinds of representation.
This lesson will focus on the various plans for representation debated during the Constitutional Convention of 1787. By examining the views of delegates as recorded in James Madison's Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, students will understand the arguments of those who supported either the Virginia Plan or New Jersey Plan. Students will also see why the Connecticut Compromise was crucial for the Convention to fulfill its task of remedying the political flaws of the Articles of Confederation.
Why was the question of representation such an important issue to the delegates at the Constitutional Convention of 1787?
In whose interest were the compromises made?
To what extent are the decisions made in 1787 still relevant today?
Identify key delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and analyze their views concerning representation.
Evaluate the schemes of representation in the Virginia Plan, the New Jersey Plan, and the Hamilton Plan.
Assess how the question of representation affected whether the changes proposed by the Convention would lead to a "national" or a "federal" system.
Evaluate the results of the Connecticut Compromise with regard to representation.
Examine contemporary issues regarding state and federal representation to determine the degree of change that has occurred over time.

Fear of factionalism and political parties was deeply rooted in Anglo-American political culture before the American Revolution. Leaders such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson hoped their new government, founded on the Constitution, would be motivated instead by a common intent, a unity. Though dominant, these sentiments were not held by all Americans. A delegate to the Massachusetts ratifying convention, for example, asserted that “competition of interest…between those persons who are in and those who are out office, will ever form one important check to the abuse of power in our representatives.” (Quoted in Hofstader, p. 36) Hamilton argued from a slightly different perspective in Federalist #70: “In the legislature, promptitude of decision is oftener an evil than a benefit. The differences of opinion, and the jarrings of parties in that department of the government, though they may sometimes obstruct salutary plans, yet often promote deliberation and circumspection, and serve to check excesses in the majority.”
What were the key positions of the parties?
How important to the parties' positions were their basic attitudes toward constitutional interpretation?
Which positions of either party resonate in the politics of today?
Summarize the key positions of the Federalists and Democratic-Republicans.
Evaluate the contributions of a political party system to the advancement of democracy in the U.S.

This lesson from Facing History and Ourselves asks students to analyze and storyboard Dr. King's "Mountaintop Speech" and discuss how humans can respond to injustice. It also challenges students to reflect on the world in which they would like to live.

Lesson Plan One: Color in 3-D: A Nature Design Project by Peggy Reeves is a lesson for 6-12 graders, Middle/High School designed to take between 3-4 45 minute class periods.
Students should have prior experience/knowledge of color theory, 2-dimensional shape, 3-dimensional form, Cubism, and Fauvism. 
http://www.pbs.org/hanshofmann/
Once in the main web-site, follow the Special Features link to three choices: 1) Push and Pull Puzzle, which is an interactive color painting  2) Texturexploration, featuring a magnifying glass to examine the textural  surfaces of a Hans Hofmann painting 3) Hofmannopoly, a reproducable board game which explores Hans Hofmann's artistic career and his personal philosophy of art.