Start with a Question

After attending this summer's Primary Source institute  in July, I was in a bit of a conundrum.  I wanted to introduce the idea of soft power to ALL of my students, but my freshmen do not study the era that we focused on in the institute, which was after 1898.  So, after much thought, some research, and one proposal submission, I managed to come up with a way to integrate soft power into the discussion of the United States government's first attempts at foreign relations in the late 18th century. The entire lesson can be found at Soft Power in the Early Republic: The U.S. and France . First of all, what is soft power ?  Since most adults have not heard of the term, it is even less likely that the average teenager in my classroom is familiar with it.  It was coined by Joseph Nye in his 2004 book Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics .  Rather than ask the students to read  the book, I plan to show them a clip of the beginning of this...