Crossroads: High School Curriculum
Unit VIII: Waves of Reform: 1880s to 1921

Lesson 2

Contents

Major Concepts

Objectives

Suggested lesson/activities


Major Concepts:

  1. In the first decades of the twentieth century, culminating with its entry into the First World War in 1917, the United States asserted a new leadership position in the world.

  2. This new role raised several questions:

    1. Should the United States emulate the European great powers and become an imperial nation?
    2. What relationship should the United States have with its Western Hemisphere neighbors?
    3. Having reluctantly entered and helped to win the First World War, should the United States shoulder a major share of responsibility for world affairs by becoming a member of the League of Nations?

Objective: The students will be able to:

Develop a foreign policy statement for the United States.

Suggested lesson/activities:

  1. Students should be informed that this lesson is designed to allow them to take part in the development of a government's foreign policy in much the way that policy is actually formed -- through the interaction among experts in various fields related to foreign policy with members of the national legislative and executive branches of the federal government.

  2. Have students review the provisions of the Constitution pertaining to the powers of the Congress and the President in foreign affairs:

    Art. I, 8, cl. 3 and 10-16; Art. I, 9, cl. 7; Art. II, 1-2.

    [Either students can consult these sections in their textbooks or the teacher can prepare a transparency displaying the provisions. If the latter, the teacher should underline those parts of Art. II, 1-2, pertaining to foreign affairs.]

  3. Explain that the United States Senate acts on foreign policy on the recommendations of the Foreign Relations Committee, and the President acts on foreign policy on the advice of executive departments. Each of these officials in turn relies heavily on the advice of experts in the field. Describe the activities of the lesson following distribution of the Lesson Task, procedures for grouping, and group assignments. Establish the student groups.

    1. All students are to be given the Performance Assessment-All Student worksheet.

    2. Select 4-5 students to be members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and give each member their CROSSROADS Resource assignment sheet.

    3. Divide the remainder of the class into four groups of equal size assigning each group to one of the following expert groups: Cuba, China, Panama, or Europe.

    4. Distribute the Foreign Policy Experts CROSSROADS Resource to all members of expert groups.

  4. Allow two to three days for students to complete their group assignments.

  5. Allow two class periods for expert testimony.

  6. Use one class for the "Senate" report summarizing its positions on foreign policy.

  7. How each student is to present his or her individual "Presidential" position will vary according to the context of the school and the diversity of students.

  8. Supplemental lesson/activity: Distribute to students readings on the Spanish-American War and the First World War; after students have read these articles, lead a class discussion on the political, diplomatic, and moral strengths and weaknesses of these first American ventures as a world power. Suggested resources are: The Spanish-American War: Door to Imperialism, Isolationism vs. Interventionism, Through Mud and Disease: Building the Panama Canal, and The Panama Canal: Three Issues in Geography, in Enrichment File for Teachers (Prentice Hall); Chinese Revolution, chapter 12 in the textbook Global Insights: Peoples and Cultures (Glencoe/McGraw-Hill); From 1839 to 1919, in China: The Peoples Republic of China and Richard Nixon by Claude A. Buss. Stanford, CA: Stanford Alumni Association, 1972; and What We Lost in the Great War, by John Steele Gordon in American Heritage (July-August 1992).

A Crossroads Resource: Performance Assessment: All Students
A Crossroads Resource: Senate Foreign Relations Committee
A Crossroads Resource: Foreign Policy Experts
A Crossroads Resource: Situations in Brief: Cuba
A Crossroads Resource: Situations in Brief: China
A Crossroads Resource: Situations in Brief: Panama
A Crossroads Resource: Situations in Brief: Europe

Back to Unit VIII: Waves of Reform: 1880s to 1921