Crossroads: Middle School Unit XI Crossroads Middle School Curriculum

Unit XI: Leader of the Free World: 1945-1975

Question/Problem 5: Rate the presidencies of Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon

Contents

Objectives

Description of lesson/activity

Resources

Objectives: The students will be able to:
  1. describe the major events of the administrations of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon.

  2. explain the effects of the demise of three presidencies in a row.

  3. gather information and share it with other classmates.

  4. evaluate information and draw conclusions about three presidential administrations and their contributions.

 Description of lesson/activity:

  1. This question/problem reviews the administrations of three Presidents who had great promise but whose presidencies ended disastrously. A common thread that runs through the period 1960±1974 is American involvement in the Vietnam War, but thi s question/problem focuses on putting together all of the major aspects of these terms of office.

  2. The teacher will organize the class into base groups of three. Each student in the group will be assigned research on one of the three Presidents using the accompanying "Researching a President" worksheets.

  3. Using textbook, encyclopedia, biographies, and/or other resources, students should gather information on the President assigned. Students working on the same President may work together at the discretion of the teacher; approximately one class period should be set aside for this research.

  4. Students should prepare to teach/share the information they gathered with the other two members of their base group. As they prepare they should complete the section of the accompanying "Presidents Chart" that applies to the President they had researched.

  5. Returning to the base groups, each student should in turn share information with the other two students and complete the "Presidents Chart" worksheet.

  6. The teacher should then assign an essay on rating the Presidents using these directions:

    Presidents are constantly evaluated, both by the public during their administrations and by historians afterwards. Your assignment is to rate the presidencies of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard M. Nixon based on the research your base group has done.

    1. Choose the presidency you feel was best and support your opinion with three reasons justified by examples.
    2. Choose the presidency you feel was worst and support your opinion with three reasons justified by examples.
    3. See the "Essay on Presidents: Assessment Criteria" for more details.

  7. Teachers may require the use of criteria such as foreign policy, domestic policy, impact on history, etc. in order to add additional focus to the essay. Teachers may alternatively require students to rank all three Presidents, using their resear ch to justify their choices. Many answers to this essay are potentially correct; students should be evaluated on their use of information to justify their choices; see the assessment criteria.

  8. As a concluding activity, the teacher should lead a class discussion about the effects of Kennedy's assassination, Johnson's decision not to seek a second term in the face of mounting opposition to the Vietnam War, and Nixon's resignation because of the pressure of the Watergate scandal. The teacher should lead students to the understanding of this point made by historian Richard B. Bernstein in his book, The Presidency:

    Richard Nixon's resignation, on August 9, 1974, marked the end of an era in the history of the Presidency. From the end of the Second World War to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the American people had tended to believe that t he government was telling them the truth, automatically assuming that the President knew best and that his decisions about policy should not be doubted. The questions raised by President Kennedy's murder, the public disenchantment with the Vietn am Conflict, and the Watergate scandal shattered public confidence in government. These crises also seemed to indicate that one of the greatest problems facing the nation was an "imperial Presidency" that had to be brought back under control to preserve the Constitution.
Resources:

Resource 1: Researching a President: John F. Kennedy

Resource 2: Researching a President: Lyndon B. Johnson

Resource 3: Researching a President: Richard M. Nixon

Resource 4: Presidents Chart

Resource 5: Essay on the Presidents: Assessment Criteria

Many biographies and other resources contain excellent information about the Presidents studied. Students may find especially useful:

  1. Bernstein, Richard B. and Jerome Agel. The Presidency. (New York: Walker and 1989. This book has been integrated with two companion books on Congress and the Supreme Court into a single, revised, and updated volume by the same authors: Of the Pe ople, By the People, For the People:The Congress, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court in American History (New York: Wings Books, 1993).

  2. Chelsea House Publishers, in their World Leaders Past and Present series, include biographies of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon.

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