What if Stephen Douglas instead of Abraham Lincoln had won the U.S. presidential election of 1860? What if John F. Kennedy had not carried some of the eight states he won by 2 percentage points or fewer in 1960? What if six hundred more people in Florida had voted for Al Gore in 2000? And what if, in that same year, the U.S. House of…

In the fall of 2007, the Nobel Committee awarded their Peace Prize to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (a scientific intergovernmental body set up by the World Meteorological Organization and by the United Nations Environment Program) and to former Vice-President Al Gore, Jr. The committee praised the United Nations panel for creating…

The ubiquity of documentary films in social studies courses, along with their potential to influence what students learn, clearly show that documentary films matter in social studies education. While the high rate of documentary film usage by social studies teachers indicates that they are amenable to bringing new films into their classrooms, they…

For many schools, "Going Green" once meant turning out the lights after leaving the classroom, filling the recycle bins, and celebrating Earth Day. Not anymore. Although such activities remain staples of environmentally conscious school systems, that consciousness has exploded in an era of high energy prices, global warming threats, and…

This edition of the Brown Center Report on American Education marks the first issue of volume three--and eleventh issue over all. The first installment was published in 2000, just as the Presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and Al Gore were winding down. Education was an important issue in that campaign. It has not been thus far in the current…

For students of history, the acrimonious and contentious 1876 presidential canvass came to mind during the 2000 election imbroglio. Democrat Samuel J. Tilden won the popular vote, but to the dismay of outraged Democrats, an electoral commission of eight Republicans and seven Democrats decided along strict party lines to give twenty disputed…