Effective citizen participation implies the acquisition of skills and knowledge necessary for discussing and deciding national security issues. This book was developed to provide teachers with resources to design and strengthen national security education. The 30 self-contained lessons supplement and enrich current textbook treatment of national security issues rooted in U.S. history. The text outlines national security topics beginning with the writing of the U.S. Constitution and continuing through contemporary issues. Unit 1 focuses on the powers relating to national security and how they are distributed between the President and Congress. Unit 2 emphasizes the westward expansion of the nation before the Civil War and how national security was affected by that growth. Unit 3 discusses national security problems relating to the Civil War. Unit 4 stresses the problems caused by the nation's development into a world power after the Civil War. Unit 5 focuses on the two World Wars and national security topics related to them. Unit 6 discusses the Cold War era, including the policy of containment, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the "domino theory," the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the SALT II treaty. (SM)