Current Issues

Massive student-led protests have erupted in Mexico against government corruption and the state’s failure to protect its citizens from widespread gang violence. In this lesson, students learn what sparked the protests and discuss the wider issues behind them. 

This lesson includes two parts. In Part 1, students review the facts about the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases.  In Part 2, students break into small groups to discuss six different proposals that have been made to address injustices related to these incidents.

Students consider a range of responses to the police killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown. 

In this circle activity, students share their thoughts and feelings about events in Ferguson and reflect on a quote about protest from Martin Luther King Jr.

In this brief activity, students share their thoughts and feelings about the grand jury's decision not to indict the police officer who killed unarmed black teen Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. 

The world's richest 85 people have as much wealth as half the people on earth. Students develop graphics or concepts to demonstrate this extreme inequality, express their thoughts and feelings about it, consider four ways people are working to address the problem, and discuss how they might take...

In this lesson, students learn about a performance art piece by Columbia University student Emma Sulkowicz that dramatizes her reactions to the handling of her campus sexual assault case. Then students consider the wider issue of sexual assault, particularly on college campuses. 

Twenty-five years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, students learn about the wall's rise and fall, and consider the legacy of the Cold War. (See also our companion lesson on the 25th anniversary of Solidarity's victory in Poland.)

In small and large group reading and discussion, students consider the U.S. response to Ebola and the need to develop a sense of our interconnectness and responsibility to each other in the face of such global challenges. Extension activities include a video, slideshow, and additional readings.

This lesson provides factual information to students about Ebola.  Providing accurate information about the disease may help prevent misinformed students from targeting classmates who are from Africa (or thought to be from Africa), which has happened in some schools.  If students have been targeted...