Bring Back Our Girls - Getting Social Studies Students to Care and Think with Current Events

On CNN Student News there was a clip about the tragedy in Nigeria.  It really had an impact on my 7th and 8th graders - and me.  The discussion and learning that followed was tremendous.  Nobody questioned "Why do we have to learn this?" that day.  Social Studies was not boring.  It made them think about what kind of world they live in and what type of impact they would like to have on it.  What is the role of governments?  What makes the US different than other countries?  What do we (personally and as a notion) stand for?

Before the news clip, they did some basic research on Nigeria.  I have them complete a spreadsheet during current events.  They put in the country in the news that day in the first column followed by the capital, continent, leader, government type, currency, per capita GDP, HDI, vocabulary terms, and a 1 - 2 sentence current events summary.  Most of this information can be found on Wikipedia or the CIA World Factbook sites.  This gives them a chance to do some comparing with other countries we have covered as well as the US that is on there for comparison.  After a few entries, they start using terms like HDI and GDP when comparing countries.  Even economics isn't boring if it is relevant to something in which they are interested!  The fact that it is the 7th most populous country in the world was surprising to most - including me.  The large variety of ethnic groups in the country and the north/south split of Islam and Christianity helped them see some of the problems Nigeria faced after gaining its independence from the United Kingdom in 1960.  That's why the official language is English - like us!

There was some new information that I shared with them about the abducted girls http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/06/world/africa/nigeria-kidnapped-girls.html?_r=0 I always try to introduce some new vocabulary and have them do some reading to supplement what they have seen.  They do well at this when they have some inspiration for reading.  In this case, we defined the terms "extremists" and "abduction".

The most interesting discussion was over the question of "What should be done about this?"  You have to be careful here.  I'm not trying to convince them of anything, but tell them they need to figure out what they believe.  What should be done?  Who should do it?  How involved should we (the school, country, world) be in protecting these girls or children anywhere?  What is the role of governments?  Do we have any responsibility for others in foreign countries?  Is it our business?  Should it be?

This got them going.  Again, I stressed the fact that we are not here to try to convince others of our views (we will rarely get 100% agreement on most issues), but I would like them each to develop their own political conscience.  What do you stand for?  This needs to be determined in order to find politicians you can support.  But none of this can be done if you don't even know what is going on in the world in the first place.  People need to be aware of issues before anything can be done about them.  This can happen in Social Studies.