ACCOUNTABILITY AND RESPONSIBILITY LESSON PLAN:

Objective: Students will deliberate on the following: Does the United

States have the moral responsibility to intervene in foreign affairs?
1) Do Now: What issues does the U.S. need to consider before
intervening in foreign affairs? Put them into 5 categories from most
important to least important.
2) The United States and the Holocaust: Using the power point, take
the students from the 1930s until liberation of the death camps and
have students decide at various points, what the U.S. should do:
Should the U.S. intervene? But they have to make their decisions
based on their categories. Hold them to it.
3) Hand outs about Upstanders and Bystanders (located in Facing
History and Ourselves packet: use Lesson 15: Handout 1, Reading 9)
and Roosevelts position hand out (this is a poorly worded quote: let
them read it briefly but I will do the summarizing because it is hard to
understand).
(The location of when to give the handouts is in the note section of the
power point).
4) Lessons of the Holocaust:
Does the United States have the moral responsibility to intervene in
foreign affairs?
5) Tell them that they can now swap out their categories: they can add
to them if they want to.
6) Show Einsteins quote:
7) Rwanda case study: Have them make a decision (based on their new
categories) about if and when the U.S. should have intervened. Maybe
tell them or show them Clintons quote about regret.
8) If students bring up the United Nations and not going at it alone:
bring up the idea of dissemination of responsibility: that people
sometimes dont act because they think others will: use the example of
doing group work where everyone expects someone else to do it and
so most dont do anything, except for maybe one personwho may be
absent: then what?

9) Close with: We all have a responsibility: And we can learn from the
past: I am not teaching you this lesson to make you depressed or to
make you feel powerless: on the contrary: I want you to realize that
you have the power to make change. With your partner, come up with
some ways that you can influence change regarding American policy.
10) Optional: When they leave give them the recent news article about
whether the allies should have bombed the railroad lines going into
Auschwitz.