A recent surge in demand for curricular materials about terrorism and foreign policy has kept the Choices Program, the curriculum-writing branch of the Watson Institute for International Studies, very busy.
Total sales of internationally oriented curricular materials for the last five years are up 150 percent compared to the five years before Sept. 11, 2001, with the sharpest increases occurring over the past three years, according to Susan Graseck, who is director of the Choices Program and a senior fellow in international studies. Several factors have contributed to the program's recent popularity, and the trend is largely teacher-driven, Graseck wrote in an e-mail to The Herald.
The program, which operates on the third floor of the Watson Institute, organizes teaching units into 40- to 50-page booklets that present the history and issues surrounding ongoing international conflicts as well as responses to these conflicts. Brown professors play a large role in generating ideas, checking for errors, maintaining balance and directing curriculum writers to relevant resources, said Choices Program Curriculum Writer Sarah Kreckel.
The booklet format gives Choices materials a few advantages over standard textbooks. While a textbook "doesn't go into the kind of depth you want it to go into in order to cover these kinds of topics. ... The (booklets) could," Graseck said. Many schools are only able to update textbooks every few years, so Choices can cover events that happened after many textbooks were published.
Choices' current events units discuss several solutions to America's international problems. For example, the third edition of "The U.S. Role in the World" booklet asks students to compare the neoconservative, isolationist, multilateralist and realpolitik approaches. Students propose, defend and analyze their assigned approach.
The options provided by Choices Program materials can increase student engagement. "At the end of the day, many of my students will find a study of the contemporary immigration debate to be more interesting than, say, the War of 1812," said Josh Otlin, a social studies teacher at Hudson High School in Hudson, Mass., who makes use of Choices materials in several of his courses.
Policy-making segments bring "the picture alive by having the kids go through and step inside the material," said Kelly Keogh, a social science teacher at Normal Community High School in Normal, Ill. "There are inherent strengths and weaknesses to all these options. ... Kids go through and see there is no such thing as a fail-proof policy," he added.
Choices actively solicits teacher feedback, holds teaching workshops nationwide and employs high school teachers in the production of materials. The correspondence is "what makes me such a big advocate," Keogh said.
