Women's issues have never concerned only women. What are generally called women's issues--such as day care, abortion, and equal pay--actually involve both sexes. Organize the class so that each student has just one of the so-called women's issues. Request a one-page statement setting forth policy recommendations as to how the issue should be addressed. Ask for a second page summarizing the social, political, and economic consequences of the proposal on the first page. Ask for a third page suggesting how problems raised on the second page can be dealt with. The exercise is one of recognizing complexity. Have several students make presentations of their positions to the class. Three overall works of value are Rosalind Rosenberg, Divided Lives: American Women in the Twentieth Century (1992), Eleanor Flexner and Ellen Fitzpatrick, Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States (enlarged edition; 1996), and the legally oriented Women in American Law: The Struggle toward Equality from the New Deal to the Present (1991) by Judith A. Baer. For more specific focus, see Mary Frances Berry, Why ERA Failed: Politics, Women's Rights, and the Amending Process of the Constitution (1986); Barbara R. Bergman, The Economic Emergence of Women (1987); and Phyllis Schlafly, The Power of Positive Woman (1977).

Americans must believe that neologisms are fun. Among those that have caught the national fancy are hippies and yuppies. Organize two groups of three students and ask each group to take one of the terms. Define it. Describe those wearing the name. Take positions of advocacy in support of the lifestyle of the group. Ask each of the two sets of students to make a presentation to the class; then invite the class to challenge the advocacy. See Charles Reich, The Greening of America (1970); Studs Terkel, The Great Divide: Second Thoughts on the American Dream (1988); and contemporary journalistic accounts.

In 1983 the United States invaded the island of Grenada amid a chorus of general public approval. Subsequently, however, questions arose about the efficiency of the military operation, about the situation of American students on the island, and about the motivation for the invasion. Ask two students who are most likely to disagree with each other to prepare an assessment of the invasion and present it to the class. See Gordon K. Lewis, Grenada: A Jewel Despoiled (1987), and contemporary periodical literature.

Similar questions may be asked about U.S. dealings with Nicaragua. Ask four students to consider the following: Were U.S. interests sufficiently threatened to justify underwriting a guerrilla war to overthrow the government? If the answer to the first question is yes, were the means, including secret funding in defiance of Congress, appropriate? Assign two students to represent each side of the first question and ask all four, according to their own preference, to address the second. Select two to present formal position statements to the class. Then open for general discussion. See E. Bradford Burns, At War in Nicaragua: The Reagan Doctrine and the Politics of Nostalgia (1987), and Robert Kagan, A Twilight Struggle: American Power and Nicaragua, 1977-1990 (1995).

As memories of the oil crises of 1973 and 1979 began to fade, gas-guzzlers came back on the market in the late 1980s. Students, especially those too young to remember, may need a reawakening. Assign three students to search in contemporary periodicals for the most heart-rending accounts that they can find of effects of the oil shortage. Present them to the class.