KI director Ling Woo Liu, Calif. State Superintendent of Public Instruction, KI co-founder Karen Korematsu in January 2012
California Department of Education Resources
January 17, 2012 Calif. Dept of Education press release: State Schools Chief Tom Torlakson Urges Public to Observe Fred Korematsu Day
January 28, 2011 Calif. Dept of Education press release: State Schools Chief Tom Torlakson Notes California’s First Fred Korematsu Day
For more educational resources on civil rights and the U.S. Constitution, please visit the California Department of Education’s Web site at Instructional Materials – History-Social Science.
Connecting California Social Studies Standards with Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution
ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
Kindergarten
K.1 Students understand that being a good citizen involves acting in certain ways.
2. Learn examples of honesty, courage, determination, individual responsibility, and patriotism in American and world history from stories and folklore.
3. Know beliefs and related behaviors of characters in stories from times past and understand the consequences of the characters’ actions.
K.6 Students understand that history relates to events, people, and places of other times.
1. Identify the purposes of, and the people and events honored in, commemorative holidays, including the human struggles that were the basis for the events (e.g., Thanksgiving, Independence Day, Washington’s and Lincoln’s Birthdays, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Veterans Day).
Grade 1
1.1 Students describe the rights and individual responsibilities of citizenship.
2. Understand the elements of fair play and good sportsmanship, respect for the rights and opinions of others, and respect for rules by which we live, including the meaning of the “Golden Rule.”
1.5 Students describe the human characteristics of familiar places and the varied backgrounds of American citizens and residents in those places.
1. Recognize the ways in which they are all part of the same community, sharing principles, goals, and traditions despite their varied ancestry; the forms of diversity in their school and community; and the benefits and challenges of a diverse population.
Grade 2
2.5 Students understand the importance of individual action and character and explain how heroes from long ago and the recent past have made a difference in others’ lives (e.g., from biographies of Abraham Lincoln, Louis Pasteur, Sitting Bull, George Washington Carver, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Golda Meir, Jackie Robinson, Sally Ride).
Grade 3
3.4 Students understand the role of rules and laws in our daily lives and the basic structure of the U.S. government.
1. Discuss the importance of public virtue and the role of citizens, including how to participate in a classroom, in the community, and in civic life.
6. Describe the lives of American heroes who took risks to secure our freedoms (e.g., Anne Hutchinson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King, Jr.).
Grade 4
4.4 Students explain how California became an agricultural and industrial power, tracing the transformation of the California economy and its political and cultural development since the 1850s.
5. Discuss the effects of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and World War II on California.
4.5 Students understand the structures, functions, and powers of the local, state, and federal governments as described in the U.S. Constitution.
1. Discuss what the U.S. Constitution is and why it is important (i.e., a written document that defines the structure and purpose of the U.S. government and describes the shared powers of federal, state, and local governments).
Grade 5
5.7 Students describe the people and events associated with the development of the U.S. Constitution and analyze the Constitution’s significance as the foundation of the American republic.
3. Understand the fundamental principles of American constitutional democracy, including how the government derives its power from the people and the primacy of individual liberty.
4. Understand how the Constitution is designed to secure our liberty by both empowering and limiting central government and compare the powers granted to citizens, Congress, the president, and the Supreme Court with those reserved to the states.
5. Discuss the meaning of the American creed that calls on citizens to safeguard the liberty of individual Americans within a unified nation, to respect the rule of law, and to preserve the Constitution.
HIGH SCHOOL
Grade 11
11.7 Students analyze America’s participation in World War II.
5. Discuss the constitutional issues and impact of events on the U.S. home front, including the internment of Japanese Americans (e.g., Fred Korematsu v. United States of America) and the restrictions on German and Italian resident aliens; the response of the administration to Hitler’s atrocities against Jews and other groups; the roles of women in military production; and the roles and growing political demands of African Americans.
Grade 12
12.5 Students summarize landmark U.S. Supreme Court interpretations of the Constitution and its amendments.
1. Understand the changing interpretations of the Bill of Rights over time, including interpretations of the basic freedoms (religion, speech, press, petition, and assembly) articulated in the First Amendment and the due process and equal-protection-of-the-law clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.
4. Explain the controversies that have resulted over changing interpretations of civil rights, including those in Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown v. Board of Education, Miranda v. Arizona, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena, and United States v. Virginia (VMI).
12.10 Students formulate questions about and defend their analyses of tensions within our constitutional democracy and the importance of maintaining a balance between the following concepts: majority rule and individual rights; liberty and equality; state and national authority in a federal system; civil disobedience and the rule of law; freedom of the press and the right to a fair trial; the relationship of religion and government.
