Teaching Social Studies

While teaching ethics is universally applauded, how one goes about it is much more difficult and contested than is often recognized. On Teaching and Learning Christian Ethics addresses what it means to teach and learn ethics through a thorough comparison of two ethicists, Henry Sidgwick and F. D. Maurice. Where Sidgwick understood ethics as developing a method for guiding voluntary action to what is right, Maurice maintained that ethics concerns life as a whole, and that requires placing it within a metaphysical and theological realm in which the good is much more definitive than right.

Arrested? For teaching? John Scopes’s crime riveted the world, and crowds flocked to the trial of the man who dared to tell students about a forbidden topic—evolution. The year was 1925, and discussing Darwin’s theory of evolution was illegal in Tennessee classrooms. Lawyers wanted to challenge the law, and businessmen smelled opportunity. But no one imagined the firestorm the Scopes Trial would ignite—or the media circus that would follow.

We all have choices to make every day, even the youngest children. The choices we make play a large part in forming who we grow to be as adults. For kids, those choices can include whether to be obedient or disobedient, to share or be selfish, to have a good attitude or not, and more. John Ortberg addresses the ability to choose in a whimsical way by inviting children to use their "magnificent chooser" that God gave them to make right choices daily.

This short introduction provides the historical background for Pope Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum as well as some detail about the pope himself. It also provides a paragraph-by-paragraph summary of the document to better understand the teaching. This is ideal for students of the document and those studying Catholic social teaching.