Overview
This unit addresses the American classroom and how Supreme Court rulings have shaped education in the United States from elementary through high school. In a three week unit ninth grade scholars will develop an understanding of how laws and court rulings affect their rights to an education in our country. In the Pittsburgh Public Schools, the PSP program (Pittsburgh Scholars Program) is populated by students who are above mainstream level in achievement and work ethic but not eligible for the gifted program because of IQ scores. In my high school these classes are usually fully enrolled (30 students) with 22 – 25 white students and 5– 8 Asian and African American students between the ages of 13 and 18. At Taylor Allderdice High School there may be three to five sections each of Mainstream, Scholars, and Gifted English classes per grade (9-12). Classes are taught daily for 43 minutes per period and last throughout the entire school year. While this unit is intended for 9th grade, adaptations for other high school grades will be included in Appendix A.
The background material in this unit will include who has been allowed to learn, where students have been allowed to attend school, and what they have been allowed to study throughout this country's existence. To achieve this, Supreme Court cases will be presented to illustrate the former restrictions and the freedoms that have been won in American education over the past two hundred years. Information on the Supreme Court case: Brown v. Board of Education (1954) will illustrate to students what their educational rights are and how they became their rights. All of this will serve as a lead-in to a unit on Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 which poses the question of the government's right to decide what is allowed to be learned, how, who will learn it, and where.
Comments: