Using the History of African American Civil Rights Leaders to Teach Leadership to High School Students (Our Future Leaders)
social studies teacher can use to create lesson plans for concepts that are difficult for students to master. This article is about such literature and how using it has resulted in students understanding and incorporating one of the most difficult lessons to absorb—leadership. By engaging this literature, students also accrued tangential benefits as they learned how to defend a position in both written and oral form. Teaching leadership to students today is a monumental task. Traditionally, educators have used historical figures as role models. However, this approach often fails to identify the individual talents and characteristics that make a good leader. While teachers extol virtues, herald admirable qualities, and assess accomplishments, they rarely describe the specific techniques and strategies that each exemplary leader employed. By using two current texts, teachers can help students master a very difficult and often controversial topic. Social studies education in our nation’s high schools should be more than an examination of the past and an evaluation of the present. Social studies should prepare students to both recognize and employ leadership skills. The National Council for the Social Studies (1994) defends this position in its list of teaching goals: subject mastery, contributions to the common good, critical thinking, problem solving, and full participation in democratic society.