Rationale
The topic of terrorism can be overwhelming for an adult, let alone a child. America's children live in a big world and may be overlooked when we are dealing with something as serious as terrorism. Whether students live in the suburbs or urban communities, all young people face the same thoughts of another terrorist attack. For this reason, more than others, I offer this research on their behalf. Hopefully, being educated on terrorism will help to decrease the fear associated with this type of criminal act.
I teach at Howard High School of Technology in Wilmington, Delaware. I teach Introduction to Criminal Justice to 10 th and 11 th graders in the Legal Administrative Assistant Career Program. Upon completion of this course, these high school students will receive three college credits from an articulation agreement with the local community college. This course addresses the serious question of how the criminal justice system should deal with terrorism. When teaching this topic in the past, my students have shown a keen interest in the idea of terrorist actually being freedom fighters rather than terrorist. They have stated that with the present Iraq war, Iraqi citizens may view the America military as terrorist in their land, even though Americans see our military as freedom fighters. The students were also under the impression that on 9-11, America was targeted because of democracy and its values.
The students I teach do not have a real sense of everything involved with terrorism. Many have never heard the terms counterterrorism, narcoterrorism, bioterrorism, ecoterrorism, etc. (These terms are defined in this unit under Overview and Facts on Terrorism). This issue of my students being ignorant to the ways of the "real" world, and the threats posed against them and their future, are important to me. Because these students will be pursuing a career in the legal field, they must be knowledgeable of the criminal justice approach to curtailing terrorism. Rather than the students to accept surface explanations on this topic from the media, I believe through this curriculum unit they will be able to approach the topic more objectively.
In teaching this curriculum unit, I will utilize resources from the 2008 Yale National Teaching Institute Theories and Practice of Democracy. There are various resources located in the "Materials I Reviewed" section of this curriculum unit that include books, articles, law enforcement expert opinions, news articles, Internet resources, and information on democracy, the USA Patriot Act, the American criminal justice system, and court cases on law and terrorism.
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