Affirmative Action

My unit is intended for my eighth grade Social Studies classes. This unit may also be used in a high school American history course. There are three reasons why I chose to focus my unit on affirmative action. One, my school is becoming a magnet school with a concentration on global studies. As a consequence, my students will be studying issues that affect different ethnic groups in the United States. Two, many of my students come from a variety of ethnic groups—i.e. African-American, Polish, Italian, Laotian, Luthuanian, Turkish, Kenyan, Guinean, Hungarian. Based on the fact that a majority of my students are minorities, affirmative action can and could play an integral role in their future. Finally, many Americans’ view and the Supreme Court’s view of affirmative action has changed drastically over the past several years since its inception. Thus , in my opinion I strongly feel that my students need to have an understanding of how and why affirmative action evolved in the United States as well as the current status of this policy.