SC Bar

A curriculum was created entitled, Connecting to the Courts: A Teacher’s Guide to the South Carolina Courts, modeled with permission after a curriculum thoroughly developed for the Wisconsin Supreme Court Institute. The curriculum was modified to have a direct correlation to the SC Courts and was correlated to the SC social studies standards.  This curriculum in addition to a CD-Rom with all handouts and a copy of the Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United State will be offered as hands on materials.

 

The course materials are designed to help secondary students learn about constitutions, courts, and cases. Focusing on these topics as part of a comprehensive democracy education program has the potential to help young people build the understanding, skills, and attitudes necessary for active and informed participation in a democracy.

 

Our political and legal systems are complex and often intimidating, but it is apparent from recent research that young people who learn about the legal and political systems in school are more willing to participate as citizens in this democracy. To be effective, democracy education must (1) focus on controversial issues, (2) be taught interactively, (3) and involve outside resource people. The course materials are designed with those goals in mind. First, the lessons in the book do not shy away from controversy.  Controversial issues are part and parcel of democracy, and it is imperative that young people learn how to develop and communicate well-reasoned opinions on these issues. Some of those controversial issues are examined in the lessons.  Focusing students’ attention on controversial legal issues lends authenticity and helps to ensure that school prepares students for the real world.

 

Content alone, however, does not make for high quality democracy education. It is also important that the way students learn imparts core tenets of democracy. For this reason, the learning strategies embedded throughout the course materials are highly interactive and collaborative. Through activities such as moot courts and the “grant/deny” petition exercise, students are taught to work cooperatively to analyze core constitutional principles and apply them to real-life situations. While developing important content knowledge and academic skills, students are also learning how to come together as a “public” to make decisions about important issues.

 

Finally, many of the lessons and programs described in the course materials bring young people into contact with people in the community (judges, lawyers, politicians) who can work with teachers to enliven and lend authenticity to the curriculum. In addition to lessons that focus on how resource people can play a role in the classroom, the course materials contain information on programs outside the school that can help students learn about law, politics, and the courts.

To ensure that the legal and political systems honor the commitment to fairness and equality under the law, we must educate the nation’s youth for active and informed democratic participation. It is hoped that the lessons and ideas presented will help teachers inspire their students to care about the issues confronting our democracy and realize that only through their participation can the development of a “more perfect union” be inspired.