Welcome to our High School Curriculum on the Death Penalty. This website and its accompanying materials are designed to assist both teachers and students in an exploration of capital punishment, presenting arguments for and against its use, as well as issues of ethics and justice that surround it.
Students will find an innovative and interactive website that is ideally suited for classroom use involving group work, class discussions, and independent reflection. However, students doing independent projects may also use the site.
The authors of this curriculum site have made every effort to ensure that the educational approach is balanced, respecting the views of all sides in this often-spirited debate. The site was principally designed by the Michigan State Communications Technology Laboratory, which has prepared a number of award-winning educational sites on other topics. Teacher educators in conjunction with practicing teachers in the fields of social studies, history and religion, worked together to develop the curriculum. Factual content was provided by the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), a non-profit organization that conducts research on issues related to capital punishment. The Center utilized a broad spectrum of case decisions, news accounts, books and scholarly journals in assembling the content. Funding for the project was provided by grants from the Soros Foundation and the Columbia Foundation.
Awards and Recognition
The Death Penalty Information Center’s high school curriculum site has received numerous awards and recognitions for educational value, high quality content, and high quality site design.
The site was reviewed and selected as a member of the GEM Gateway Consortium of Internet-based educational materials, received a 5 star rating from Pacific Bell’s Blue Web’n Library of Educational Resources, as well as a Lightspan StudyWeb award, an Awesome Library Editor’s Choice recognition as being among the top 5% of educational sites on the web, and a Busy Educator Award.
The Teacher’s Edition of this curriculum can be accessed here.
You can reference this site for use in a research paper as follows:
Date accessed is the date on which you viewed the site.
An introduction to the navigation system, features, and terminology of DPI's website.
Information about scheduled executions around the country
For every 8.2 people executed in the United States in the modern era of the death penalty, one person on death row has been exonerated.
States With and Without the Death Penalty
PDF handout with facts about the Death Penalty
