Running Head: CITIZENSHIP PAPER
Citizenship Paper
Mariane Mitchell
January 06, 2011
MTE/531CA
Ronita Scott
Teachers today have the challenging yet rewarding task of educating a classroom filled
with diverse learners who represent a variety of backgrounds and cultures. Within these
students lies a multitude of opinions and viewpoints about controversial topics that are
imbedded in some of the content that is taught. Two of these content areas are history and
social science. While avoiding controversy may be limited, what is not is the ability to
teach controversial issues in the classroom. “Addressing Current Controversial Issues
through the Social Studies Curriculum: Making Social Studies Come Alive”€ by Obed
Dube (2009) explores the various ways that teachers can address controversial issues.
Although this article is written with the focus of teachers in Botswana, the author provides
a variety of ways that can be useful for all teachers around the world.
The above mentioned article explores the various ways that teachers can address
controversial issues within the social studies curriculum in order to make it as lively and
interesting as possible (Dube, 2009). The author provides suggestions for making the
instruction and learning of social science as lively, interesting and relevant to all students
in order to develop their full potentials as good citizens of this world. It is interesting that
Dube points out that the content of social studies instruction concerns itself with the five
“Ws”€, who what, when, where and why of an issue and/or event. It is the why that tends
to draw out the controversy because of the varied opinions and viewpoints that are
