Overview
This unit addresses the issue of civil liberties in today's America utilizing Arthur Miller's The Crucible, which is included with extensive study questions and writing prompts in the McDougell Littell textbook The Language of Literature: American Literature, Houghton Mifflin 2002. This three-week unit is designed for eleventh grade scholars. In the Pittsburgh Public Schools, the scholars are students who are higher achieving than mainstream students but who have not qualified for the gifted program. Class size is usually 30 students with a fairly even distribution of males and females. Often, a scholars' class in my school will be made up of 22—25 white students and 5—8 Asian or African American students. In my high school there may be five or six sections each of Mainstream, Scholars, and Gifted English per grade level. Classes meet daily for 43 minutes. Suggestions for adapting this unit to other high school grade levels 9, 10, and 12 are included in AppendixA.
Civil liberties affect everyone. In times of war, a citizen's rights are endangered in many ways, including the possibility of the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. This writ comes from British common law and dates back to 1671. Essentially, it states that a person who is arrested must be brought before a judge who orders the court appearance. In other words, people can't be arrested and held without a specific charge. In order to examine how this and other basic rights have fared in wartime, a brief look at the history of wars that have affected this country and the civil liberties of its citizens will be reviewed. Fortunately, the eleventh grade English curriculum is geared to coincide with that of the required American history course. A wealth of literature, nonfiction, and writing exercises are included, and the required test dates from early inhabitants of North America through the 1990s.
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