To War or Not? Engaging Middle School Students in an Ongoing Online Discussion

In seeking to prepare students to be “citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world,” teachers engage students in live, online discussions about what justifies war, while at the same time grappling with the requirements to teach the memorization of people, places and isolated events. Teachers and a university professor worked to teach students to think inductively about the justification of war, a theme found in most history curricula.     

Slavery: A Supplementary Teaching Bibliography

This study will argue that from 1916 to 1935 Emperor Haile Selassie I adopted a two-pronged strategy of supporting the gradual abolition of slavery while taking steps towards its immediate abolition. Emperor Haile Selassie I was compelled to adopt a policy of gradual abolition due to the deposition of Iyasu V, the institutional nature of Ethiopian slavery and the agricultural primacy of the Ethiopian economy. This article will also contend that Emperor Haile Selassie I sought the immediate abolition of slavery because he wanted to improve the international image of Ethiopia, stave off a European invasion and/or partition, and prevent Ethiopia from becoming a mandate of the League of Nations.     

Reshaping Southern history: Studies in the development of Agrarian capitalism in the nineteenth‐century South∗

The Reshaping of Plantation Society: The Natchez District, 1860–1880. Michael Wayne. Baton Rouge, La: Louisiana State University Press. 1983. xiv, 226 pp. £22.95.

White Land, Black Labor: Caste and Class in Late Nineteenth‐Century Georgia. Charles L. Flynn, Jr. Baton Rouge, La.: Louisiana State University Press. 1983. xiv, 196 pp. £17.90.     

Causal effects of foster care: An instrumental-variables approach

This paper describes the use of instrumental-variables (IV) to estimate causal effects of foster care on long- and short-term outcomes. This estimation strategy provides a tool to evaluate what are known as “natural experiments”: settings that mimic randomization usually associated with a controlled trial. The proposed natural experiment involves the effective randomization of investigators to child-protection cases. The results suggest that foster care placement increases like likelihood of delinquency and emergency healthcare episodes. Care must be taken when interpreting IV estimates. The results apply to cases that are part of the natural experiment—“marginal cases” where the investigators may disagree about the placement recommendation.