The following standards have been taken from the Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McRel) standards.

Students will understand:

• How slavery influenced economic and social elements of southern society (e.g., how slavery hindered the emergence of capitalist institutions and values, the influence of slavery on the development of the middle class, the influence of slave revolts on the lives of slaves and freed slaves).


• The social and cultural influence of former slaves in cities of the North (e.g., their leadership of African-American communities, how they advanced the rights and interests of African Americans).


• The causes of the Civil War .


• Slavery prior to the Civil War (e.g., the importance of slavery as a principal cause of the Civil War, the growing influence of abolitionists, children's roles and family life under slavery).

• The effects of an author's style (e.g., word choice, speaker, imagery, genre, perspective) on the reader.
• Inferred and recurring themes in literary works (e.g., bravery; loyalty; friendship; good vs. evil; historical, cultural, and social themes).
• The effects of author's style and complex literary devices and techniques on the overall quality of a work (e.g., tone; irony; mood; figurative language; allusion; diction; dialogue; symbolism; point of view; voice; understatement and overstatement; time and sequence; narrator; poetic elements, such as sound, imagery, personification).
• Relationships between literature and its historical period, culture, and society (e.g., influence of historical context on form, style, and point of view; influence of literature on political events; social influences on author's description of characters, plot, and setting; how writers represent and reveal their cultures and traditions).
• The role of the media in addressing social and cultural issues (e.g., creating or promoting causes such as U.N. military action, election of political parties; use of media to achieve governmental, societal, and cultural goals).