Thursday, February 21, 2008

News Stories to Study History with

I read an article on a homeschool curricula blog and I'm intrigued. It takes a news story and discusses using it as a lesson play to teach with. I'm going to pick up on this and hopefully, build an entire website and educational effort around it. Anybody think this would be interesting? Of course, it's probably much more useful to homeschoolers than their standards-leadened school bound counterparts.

News story from earlier this week: Kosovo Breaks Away: Province declares itself sovereign; Serbia says it's illegal. Kosovo's regional parliament declared independence Sunday

Questions for discussion and research:

Has anything like this ever happened in American history? Two likely answers, the American Revolution and the Civil War.

The American Revolution was punctuated by a Declaration of Independence. Did Kosova issue a declaration of independence? If so, how did they justify their actions? In fact, lets revisit the US Declaration - What was it's purpose? How did we justify our acts? When the Confederacy declared it's independence, did it issue a declaration? What justification did it give?

Who in Kosova declared independence in terms of what organization? What claim do they have to speak for Kosova? In America, what organization did we have that declared independence and what claim did it have to speak for the colonies? And what organization was there in the Confederacy?

What do we think the Serbs will do? What did the British do when the US declared independence? What did the Union do when the Confederates declared independence? What will decide whether this will be called a War of Independence or a Civil War?

When Kosova declared independence, the US recognized them as a nation. Any idea why? The US recognition, is it important? Did anyone recognize the US as a nation after our July 1776 declaration? Why did they? How much and how did they help us (Answer; France recognized us and sent $s, generals, soldiers and support. Mostly to hurt their rival the UK). Did anybody recognize the South?

Anybody want to talk or research other efforts for independence? Anybody want to talk about the Kurds in Iraq? The Mexican war of independents? How about the Declaration of Independence by Texas (from Mexico).

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