Introduction

The impact of social issues on individual lives, schools, local towns and villages, states, the nation, and across the globe is both varied and often dramatic. Even a short list of current issues illuminates this fact: child abuse in homes of far too many primary and secondary school age students, homicidal assault in many of our nation’s schools and communities, pedophilia in many of the Catholic dioceses across the United States, the impact of human actions on the earth’s environment, the AIDS epidemic across large swaths of the globe, and the ubiquitous assault on basic human rights across the globe. To remain ignorant of or misinformed about such issues constitutes a danger to one’s very well-being, as well as the well-being of our global society.