Exploring the politics of the Texas Railroad commissions regulation of Research Paper - 1

Exploring the politics of the Texas Railroad commissions regulation of texas oil and gas from 1917-1941 - Research Paper Example In the 1920s, there was a sporadic pattern of cooperation between the state and federal governments. Tensions were high in the coordination of the state activities and those of the federal government over the control of resources. The head quarters of the railroad commission are in the state of Texas in the United States and act as among the most powerful state agencies in the country. The paramount duties and responsibilities of the Texas Railroad Commission were to regulate the entire business of oil and gas exploration and mining in the United States. Most of the oil and gas deposits of the country are in the state of Texas hence the strategic location of the commission’s headquarters in order to ensure proper administration and control of oil and gas exploration activities in the country. In addition to the regulation of gas and oil production in the United States, the Texas railroad commission also monitors and controls major shares of the pipeline safety, uranium mining, gas utilities, liquid petroleum gas safety, and surface coal. All these responsibilities lie under the docket of the commission ever since its inception. The name of the commission is a little confusing to the common citizens who are not aware of the true duties and responsibilities of the company. ... The commission does not have any links or deals with the regulation of railroads in any way at all. The name simply developed out of common utterances. Issues surrounding the commission politics The Texas Railroad Commission had a number of politics surrounding its operations as well as dealing with other factors concerned with their duties and responsibilities. The company had both internal as well as external politics facing its operations and execution of its duties and jurisdictions, especially considering it primary control of the entire industry of oil and gas exploration within the United States of America from the year 1917 to the year 1941. The commission expanded its initial mandate of overseeing petroleum exploration and the regulations of oil pipelines from 1917, to the control of oil and gas production within the entire country in 1919, and finally elevated to the regulation of delivery systems of natural gas in the year 1920. Technically, the Texas Railroad commission g ained control of all the exploration and production activities of oil and gas within the United States, a task that made the commission elevate to become the single most powerful commission in the country, while others argued it had too much power for a single commission. The politics of this commission rose from time to time due to many occurrences in the country. One particular occasion whereby there was high political tension surrounding the activities and duties of the Texas rail road commission was in the 1930s whereby there was an oil boom in the state of Texas. This oil boom led to the escalation of oil prices to 25 cents per barrel. The commission was unable to negotiate a compromise price for the sale of the oil

Category Specific Impairments in Recognition and Naming

Category Specific Impairments in Recognition and Naming Category specific impairments in recognition and naming: fact or not? - Question: What’s black and white and looks like a horse? Answer: Hmmmmm†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦..a black and white horse? Question: What do you call a guy who can’t tell the difference between an apple and a barn? Answer: Uhhhh.†¦ what’s the name for a thing with two legs, two arms and a head and, well, they look familiar†¦ they are, like, everywhere†¦ oh, I give up†¦ - Introduction to a Both Sides of an Issue In the above riddles the answers may seem strikingly obvious almost anyone. That is, anyone except what is termed â€Å"semantic impairments† in which there is a marked disability of the individual to pair up the meaning of what they see (visual semantic disorders), hear (auditory semantic disorders) or even touch (tactile semantic disorders) with the ability to identify the object. This represents essentially a disconnection between what a person knows and what they can readily express. As there are numerous specific documented cases such as those studied in Capitani, Laiacona, Mahon Caramazza’s review of 79 patients for the purpose of assessing the ‘division’ line of the impairment with regards to specific semantic categories such as â€Å"animate/living† and â€Å"inanimate/artifact†-type items (Capitani, Laiacona, Mahon, Caramazza 2003, p.213). In a different setting, Tyler and Moss present the interesting case of â€Å"DrO†, a 61-year old male who suffered particular deficits with regard to abstract words (i.e., love, hope, trust vs. concrete words such as bird, cup, etc.) following a cerebro-vascular incident. This study thoroughly details a number of testing procedures to compare his abilities to a group of peers as well as significant data in regards to his perceptual acuities such as hearing and vision. In their investigation, these utilize DrO as a literal test bed against the various theories regarding ‘traditional’ category-specific deficit disorders and the way that words and ideas might be encoded into memory. In the end, though DrO looks like a â€Å"classic† case of category-specific deficit, the researcher conclude that it is more likely to due an auditory ‘input’ problem in which they endorse the model proposed by Plaut Shallice in which concrete words are posited to ha ve greater semantic features, that is, they are easier to ‘grab on to’, and thus typically evidence faster recall and recognition (Tyler Moss, 1997, p. 315). Though it seems clear that cases exist which exhibit the phenomena of category-specific disorders, as the above example of the case of DrO indicates, things may not always be what they seem as it is not necessarily the memory that is at fault but more likely the ‘connections’ that allow one to have full mastery of the information stored in one’s own brain. In Support of Category Specific Disorders†¦ To begin, one must understand that the brain is essentially a storage bin of some sort for intangible inputs and outputs. The real trick of the matter is to know the nature of the bins†¦ specifically, how are they divided and how do they function? What is the hierarchy or taxonomy of stored sensory information? Are experiences broken down into the different sensory components? Is it stored chronologically? Most of these eclipse the current state of knowledge yet, by carefully observing the output, an idea can be formed about how the system might work. It is by these means that the idea of a category-specific impairment came to be when researchers noted, in ‘normal’ subjects, a difference in picture identification between natural objects and other artifacts suggesting that memories were stored or accessed according to some categorical hierarchy (Humphreys, Price Riddoch, 1999, p.118). Issues such as these manifest themselves in the classic ‘naming difficultyâ €™ tests such as the patient who was presented with a picture of celery and responded, â€Å"†¦it is green and you have it as a main course†¦ I dip it in salt†. This type of response, in which the subject demonstrated extensive knowledge about the object, was heard numerous times as the issue of category-specific impairment certainly seemed to be a logical explanation that fit the theory of memory in which data is separated and stored in logical â€Å"bins† to retrieve on cue later (Humphreys, Price Riddoch, 1999, p.122). Operating under the assumption that such a disorder exists, one interesting aspect that the categories while logically infinite seem to limit themselves to a comparatively very few key groups: biological categories (possibly subdivided into ‘animals’), food (often fruits vegetables) and artifact-type items with musical instruments a popular sub-category (Capitani, et al. 2003, pp. 225, 235-244). In terms of the type of impairment reflecting the proposed model, the most frequently occurring impairment has exhibits a disability to retrieve information related to the properties of an object or its associative knowledge of the item in a given category (Capitani, et al. 2003, pp. 228-229). One potential rationale for the division of categories is the within-category similarity of items. For example, categories such as â€Å"musical instruments† or â€Å"animals† have a greater perceived degree of within group similarity than categories such as â€Å"jewelryâ⠂¬  or â€Å"beverages†. Accordingly, this same justification can be utilized to rationalize the breakdown of particularly large heterogeneous categories such as â€Å"animate/living† (Sartori Lombardi, 2004, pp. 441-442, 446). Additional insights are provided when one observes impairments in items that have both â€Å"functional† and â€Å"perceptual† qualities such as would be the case in which deficits were observed in both musical instruments and living objects, thus defying the heretofore idea that deficits were limited to semantic ‘categories’. Based upon these findings, it has been hypothesized that the perspective of perceptual attributes are primary memory sorting parameters and then category-specific attributes (i.e., living vs. non-living) play a potential secondary role (Devline et al. 1998, pp. 77-78). Also, the idea that categories such as â€Å"living things† are stored/recalled by perceptual attributes while inanimate objects are stored/recalled by â€Å"functional† attributes, thereby establishing a fit for perceptual and functional priorities (Berndt, 2003 , p. 101). A popular understanding of the brain is that functions are laid out ‘topographically’ such that differing item attributes are focused in different physical locations in the cortex. Though it may seem overly simplistic, there is research to support a topographical model as evidenced by imaging studies that have demonstrated a different location of activity for living versus non-living items (Humphreys Riddoch, 2003, p. 263). Consistent with the topographical view is the â€Å"sensory/functional theory† one of the early hypothesis on how memory ‘works’ with regard to category-specific impairments. According to this theory, experiential data is organized in the brain by sensory modality and, secondly, that the primary differentiation in stimuli is determined by its sensory or perceptual properties and by its functional attributes (Caramazza Shelton, 1998, p. 4). Despite some support, a problem with these models occurs in the cases of non-focal, widely distributed legions such as those produced by Alzheimer’s or Herpes simplex encephalitis patients have produced the same type of category-specific deficit as would be expected with a highly localized lesion (Devline et al. 1998, p. 78). In attempting to explain cases from this theoretical perspective, category-specific disorder cases similar to DrO in which the problem was believed to be an ‘input’ or ‘processing’ failure, a key factor is that the impairment should not be mode-specific in that the issue should reside at the â€Å"semantic† node from which all inputs and outputs pass. That being the case, for a case to be a ‘real’ category-specific disorder, the problem should be isolated to instances in which the stimulus is presented not just in a solely audible or visual form (Caramazza Shelton, 1998, p. 13). Explaining Things Based on the existence of category-specific disorder, Humphreys and Riddoch began to seek to postulate a model that would explain the myriad complexities of both normal and deviate cases. Extending from the information presented previously on the division of categories, researchers suggest that perceptual and functional memory associations are recalled by correlated perceptual features. For example, â€Å"has a trunk† is likely to be highly correlated with an elephant whereas â€Å"has four legs†, while quite accurate, does not exude the same strength as the previous descriptor (Sartori Lombardi, 2004, p. 439; Humphreys Riddoch, 2003, p.265). This model is referred to as the â€Å"distributed semantics† model as a consequence of the features of memory being stored in numerous ‘places’. Taking this model a step further, Humphrey and Riddoch proffer the Hierarchical Interactive Theory (HIT) the allows the use of a flexible (but fairly standard) metho d of categorization by individual. In this model, there is a hierarch of processing levels that include, â€Å"the structural description system through to the semantic representations [functional attributes]†¦ or names†. With such a structure, one the means by which it differs from the distributed semantics or other models is that is acknowledges ‘up-front’ that processing can occur at level rather than a fixed ‘processing spot’ (Humphreys Riddoch, 2003, pp.266-267). In summary, though memory is, at best, only a partially understood concept, the existence of disorders such as category-specific impairments provide researchers with both a challenge and the key to solving a portion of the puzzle. By understanding the dynamics of what can happen when the system is ‘working right’, one has the opportunity observe the differences. Works Consulted Capatani, E., Laiacona, M., Mahon, B. Caramazza,A. (2003). What are the Facts of Semantic Category-Specific Deficits? A Critical Review of the Clinical Evidence. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 20 (3,4,5,6), 213-261. Caramazza, A. Shelton, J. (1998). Domain-Specific Knowledge Systems in the Brain: The Animate-Inanimate Distinction. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 10 (1), 1-34. Devlin, J., Gonnerman, L., Andersen., E., Seidenberg, M. (1998). Category-Spefic Semantic Deficits in Focal and Widespread Brain Damage: A Computational Account. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 10 (1), 77-94. Humphreys, G., Riddoch, M. (2003). A Case Series Analysis of â€Å"Category-Specific† Deficits of Living Things: The HIT Account. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 20 (3,4,5,6), 263-306. Humphreys, G., Price, C. Riddoch, M. (1999). From Objects to Names: A Cognitive Neuroscience Approach. Psychological Research, (62), pp. 118-130. Sartori, G. Lombardi, L. (2004). Semantic Relevance and Semantic Disorders. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 16 (3), 439-452. Sloan-Berndt, R. (2003). Lexical-Semantic Aspects of Language Disorders. In K. Heilman E. Valenstein (Eds.), Clinical Neuroscience, 4th Edition. (pp. 92-107). New York, New York: Oxford University Press. Tyler, L. Moss, H. (1997). Imageability and Category-specificity. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 14 (2), 293-318.

Wake Me Up When My Gold Lord Returns Essay -- Literary Analysis, The W

Most people turn their misery into depression, while a few creative minds transform their feelings into writings, many times as poetry or songs. Additionally, most pieces of literature express theme in one way or another to make the piece hold a deeper message for the audience to grasp. Themes prove universal by withstanding time and exemplifying similar meanings throughout the years. Varying elements in the literature help develop a theme and produce it to become a meaningful notion. Regardless of the different seasons used to portray the message of both the poem and the song, â€Å"The Wanderer,† a poem written by an anonymous writer in the Anglo-Saxon era, and â€Å"Wake Me Up When September Ends,† a song written by Green Day in the twenty-first century, compare the common theme that lingering in the past causes isolation and despair through the literary elements of symbolism of seasons that reveals the desolate mood and the narrator’s reluctance to chang e, imagery to further accentuate the similar theme between the two pieces, and flashback to contrast the narrator’s present depressed emotions to his past happiness. Despite the fact that the narrators use different seasons to portray the theme, both â€Å"The Wanderer† and â€Å"Wake Me Up When September Ends† develop upon season’s symbolism which depicts the desolate mood and the narrators’ reluctance to change due to their inability to let go of their past and present despair. In â€Å"The Wanderer† the narrator â€Å"woefully toil[s] on wintry seas† (l. 3) by himself because of â€Å"grievous disasters, and death of kin† (l. 7). The author uses winter to symbolize a time of little opportunity and death for the narrator because winter already examples a bleak time period with little life, and since th... ...e in his memories now. In both pieces, the flashbacks contrast the emotions of the present-day gloomy narrator to the happier emotions of the narrator before the change while the narrators’ lingering in the past causes their own seclusion and misery. In conclusion, through the elements of symbolism, imagery, and flashback â€Å"The Wanderer† and â€Å"Wake Me Up When September Ends† produce the common theme that lingering in the past creates isolation and misery. Though written in a different time period, â€Å"The Wanderer† proves relevant to today’s time through its notable comparison with a song from thousands of years later. Themes withstand time and apply to many different types of people in different ways depending on a person’s understanding of the message implied. Through literary elements, writers depict a message that the audience interprets with their own wisdom.

Essay Question

In Lie Weasel's opinion, what are the universal lessons of the Holocaust? What is the message of this particular lecture? In Lie Weasel's speech, he spoke of the cruelty of man towards Jews and how man did not view Jews as human beings. The universal lessons he spoke of were to not forget what happened and to tell the message, but not to tell it to make people â€Å"weep†, but to tell it so people could make the world a better place. It was worse than any cruelty known to man.Lie Wishes spoke at the opening of the Holocaust Museum, to dignitaries from all over the world. He spoke of some lessons, that the Holocaust taught, that were universal to man. He spoke of man's atrocities toward Jews and that their captors thought of them as less than human. We should as a species, respect all men, no matter their race, color or creed. Mr†¦ Wishes spoke so that horrors of this magnitude might be averted In the future. Another lesson to be learned from the Holocaust is that the memo ries of this event should not be pressed.They must be faced and dealt with. The repression of memories will cause them to backlash far worse than the pain of facing It. Also the facing of these memories will allow us to keep them in the forefront of our mind and ever allow these things to occur again. Mr†¦ Wishes had two main points In his speech to the world; the first was how we, as a species, allowed this to occur to our fellow man. The second was that we should never forget It and stop It from ever occurring In the future.

Social Studies Interview and Standards Investigation

Running Head: INTERVIEW AND STANDARDS INVESTIGATION Interview and Standards Investigation Sarah Woods Grand Canyon University EED 465 Curriculum, Methods, and Assessment: Social Studies Leah Barley December 8, 2011 Interview and Standards Investigation Social studies is a complicated subject for teachers to teach and for students to learn because it encompasses so many different disciplines. On top of that, society is characterized by increasingly rapid social and technological changes that affect what social studies content is being taught to students (NCSS, 1988). For many years students have been forced to learn low cognitive level information that lacks meaning and fails to transfer to real life situations. For these reasons Social Studies is the subject that students love to hate (Hope, 1996). Rather than dwelling on what has gone wrong in the past, it is best to look to the future and learn from past pedagogic mistakes to determine what can be done to energize social studies instruction in order to restore respect by students and teachers alike for such an important field (Hope, 1996). The implementation of state and national standards has been an important step in making this happen. This assessment will evaluate the state of Arizona’s Social Studies Standards for sixth grade for thoroughness, clarity, user friendliness, and comprehensiveness. It will go on to provide a well-supported, objective, academic response to the interview conducted with Ms. Traci Smith, a sixth grade social studies teacher at Will Rogers Junior High in Claremore, OK, and the standards investigation by analyzing how social studies is taught today. The Arizona Department of Education website contains five sixth grade history strands that emphasize World history from its earliest cultures through Enlightenment, including the early cultures of the Americas. The Arizona State Standards for sixth grade are extremely thorough containing strands for American History, World History, Civics/Government, Geography, and Economics each with well-defined concepts and performance objectives for students at the sixth grade level. According to the NCSS definition of Social studies, each of these topics plays a vital role in social studies education. The thoroughness of these standards helps guide lesson planning and learning because teachers know exactly what they are supposed to teach and students know exactly what they are supposed to learn in order to achieve mastery. The Arizona State Standards for Social Studies are very clearly defined by topic. This makes them easy to read and understand. This reduces confusion and frustration and promotes integration with other subject areas. Each strand is broken down further into concepts that explicitly say, where applicable, which other strand(s) they connect with in order to further student understanding. This characteristic makes the Arizona State Standards for Social Studies extremely user friendly. Finally, the Arizona State Standards for Social studies are very comprehensive. They cover a large scope of information in order to help Arizona students develop the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world (NCSS, 1993). According to Ms. Smith, social studies instruction has come a long way since she began teaching fifteen years ago. When she started it was common practice for students to read the sections in the social studies textbook, answer the questions at the end, and then take a test to demonstrate what they learned. This seemingly meaningless busy work compounded by the implementation of NCLB led to a dramatic reduction in social studies content as teachers became more concerned with high stakes testing in the primary subject areas. High stakes testing has contributed to the trend of moving away from constructivist learning and student centered teaching approaches such as discussions, role-playing, research papers, and cooperative learning (Vogler & Virtue, 2007). This is in dramatic contrast to what new teacher education programs are teaching which may be setting new teachers up for failure once they reach the classroom. In spite of the demands of high stakes testing, when Ms. Smith realized that social studies was beginning to slowly disappear from the curriculum altogether she decided to take a stand. Ms. Smith is now the sixth grade English and World History Department Head at Claremore Public Schools. Although she does teach from a textbook, Ms. Smith employs numerous hands on activities to convey subject matter to the students. For each section the students must create a project that coincides with the lesson. Her favorite section is on the Middle Ages in Europe. During this lesson the entire sixth grade participates in meaningful learning activities such as making head gear and shields, memorizing poems from this era that they must recite to their classmates, and learning the requirements for becoming a knight or a lady. Students earn certificates for acts of chivalry and the individuals who have the most certificates at the end of the unit are awarded a crown as 6th grade King and Queen. The unit culminates with a field trip to the Renaissance Festival and the Castle of Muskogee, a landmark in Oklahoma, which is where the Renaissance Festival is held (Personal Communication, T. Smith, December 12, 2011). These activities are much more meaningful than simply reading the text and completing the section review. This allows students to practice their literacy and public speaking skills which, according to Wineburg (2005), are crucially relevant for schools because it provides a way of thinking about text that allows students to find truth in the cacophony of voices that confront them in the social world. Social studies instruction is heavily influenced by teacher preparation programs. These programs are meant to teach future teachers how to teach social studies effectively. Historically these programs have had to respond quickly to social issues and events by developing courses in social sciences and education that address the concerns of minority groups. For example, a recent increase in the numbers of English Language Learners in the nation’s schools has led to added pressure to prepare teachers to work effectively with students from diverse backgrounds. For the most part these influences have had a positive impact on the preparation of social studies teachers; however in some cases the creation of new classes and requirements for pre-service teachers has led to a bloated curricula and programs that lack clear purpose (Adler, Dougan, & Garcia, 2006). The NCATE standards embolden pre-service teachers to refine their focus to prevent overlap and redundancy. Most teacher preparation programs are aligned to professional teacher standards such as this. This helps to adequately prepare teachers to facilitate learning for today’s students so that they are informed, knowledgeable, and eventually able to compete in a global society. Standards based instruction has been a double edged sword for social studies instruction. On the one hand it has led to the reduction in social studies content as a result of high stakes testing since social studies is not one of the subjects covered under NCLB, but on the other hand social studies standards have revitalized social studies instruction to help make learning fun, meaningful, and relevant for students increasing the chances that they will be able to transfer the concepts learned in the classroom to real world scenarios. If social studies teachers can continue to resist the urge to teach to the test and do everything they can to employ effective teaching strategies then hopefully everyone will realize how important social studies content is for students at all grade levels. This will ultimately result in civic minded individuals who are understanding, knowledgeable, and tolerant of other cultures which will serve them well into adulthood. References: NCSS. (1988, June). Social studies for early childhood and elementary school children: Preparing for the 21st Century. Retrieved from http://www. ncss. org/positions/elementary. Hope, W. 1996). It’s time to transform social studies teaching. The Social Studies. Washington: Jul/Aug 1996. 87, 4. Retrieved from http://proquest. umi. com. library. gcu. edu:2048/pqdweb? index=7&did=10101635&SrchMode=3&sid=1&Fmt=3&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1323634607&clientId=48377&aid=1. Arizona Department of Education Standards Based Teaching and Learn ing. (2006). Social Studies Standards Articulated By Grade Level Sixth Grade. Retrieved from http://www. azed. gov/wp-content/uploads/PDF/SSGrade6. pdf. National Council for the Social Studies. (1993, September). A vision of powerful teaching and learning in the social studies: Building social understanding and civic efficacy. Social Education. 57, 213-223. Vogler, K. & Virtue, D. (2007, May). â€Å"Just the facts ma’am†: Teaching Social Studies in the era of Standards and high stakes testing. The Social Studies. Retrieved from http://web. ebscohost. com. library. gcu. edu:2048/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer? sid=f1d20017-f490-4fd4-833e-c04d40d45566%40sessionmgr111&vid=2&hid=113. Wineburg, S. (2005, May). What does NCATE have to say to future history teachers? Phi Delta Kappan. Retrieved from http://web. ebscohost. com. ibrary. gcu. edu:2048/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer? sid=8a089d33-cc0e-40df-aaee-cdf4091de420%40sessionmgr112&vid=2&hid=113. Adler, S. , Dougan, A. , & Garcia, J. (2006, January). NCATE has a lot to say to future social studies teachers: A response to Sam Wineburg. Phi Delta Kappan. Retrieved from http://vnweb. hwwilsonweb. com. library. gcu. edu:2048/hww/results/external _link_maincontentframe. jhtml? _DARGS=/hww/results/results_common. jhtml. 44. Interview Notes Traci Smith, a 6th Grade Social Studies Teacher and 6th grade English and World History Department Head, has 15 years of experience in the classroom. Social Studies Interview Questions: 1. Do you use a textbook? If so, do you like the content? Do the students have workbooks or activity sheets to accompany the textbook? Yes, we use Glencoe’s textbook, World History: Journey Across Time – The Early Ages The students have 2 workbooks: A note-taking guide which we use from time to time, and a Guided Reading book which we do not use very often. There are teacher resources for each of the units which include vocabulary practice and guided reading activities. There are also other resources for mapping, cause-and-effect, and comparing the past to the present. . What is your favorite Social Studies lesson to teach? What sort of hands on, meaningful activities or innovative teaching methods do you use when teaching this lesson? My favorite unit to teach is the Middle Ages of Europe. The entire 6th grade participates in making head gear, shields, memorizing and reciting poems, and learning about the requirements for becoming a knight or a lady. This unit culminates with a field trip to The Castle of Muskogee where they hold the Renaissance Festival. This unit is taught at the end of the year and is a highlight for the 6th grade. We award those who have shown chivalry and crown a 6th grade King and Queen. 3. In 1992 the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) adopted the following definition of the field of social studies: Social studies is the integrated study of the social sciences and humanities to promote civic competence. Within the school program, social studies provides coordinated, systematic study drawing upon such disciplines as anthropology, archaeology, economics, geography, history, law, philosophy, political science, psychology, religion, and sociology, as well as appropriate ontent from the humanities, mathematics, and natural sciences. The primary purpose of social studies is to help young people develop the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world. How does social studies instruction at Will Rogers Junior High relate to this definition of social studies? At the junior high, we not only teach how our ancestors affected future generations and the things we have learned from them, but we also have an Advisory hour for 6th grade. During this advisory hour we teacher character development and teach the students how to apply what they learn in their everyday lives. 4. Do you believe that values should be part of the social studies curriculum? If so, what values do you feel are most important for today’s students? Yes, I do. The values of integrity, compassion, and respect; these values can be taught throughout the social studies curriculum. When I teach the religions of the world, I talk to the students about having respect for others and their beliefs. We talk about how some of the heroes of ancient history showed integrity and compassion. This is also carried over into our Advisory hour. 5. Does the State of Oklahoma have state standards for social studies? If so, what is your reaction to Oklahoma State’s Social Studies Standards? If not, do you think that Oklahoma could benefit from a set of state standards? Yes. I believe they should be more detailed. 6. What do you feel are important benchmarks for students at the 6th grade level? English and Math; the reading skills learned in social studies and science trickle over into the English curriculum. The same goes for Math and Science. . How much time per day does each student spend on Social Studies content? 2 hours per day – World History and Advisory 8. How do you rank the importance of social studies in the elementary curriculum? Please rank the following subjects in the elementary curriculum in order of importance to you. 4 Physical Education (P. E. ) 2 Mathematics 3 Science 3 Social Studies 1 Reading/Language Arts 9. How do you integrate technology i nto the Social Studies curriculum? I use power points. 10. Do you believe that the social studies curriculum should be narrowed