RE: Teaching Teenagers about the Magna Carta
As a foundational document, the magna carta is important. But the magna carta was really more about dividing power and authority between the papacy, the nobility and the king. The meaning we assign it today is more about how those concepts of legally circumscribed authority were applied in the 17th and 18th centuries than what it meant at the time.
To me, if youre talking about the English underpinnings of the Bill of RIghts, the Petition of Rights, Charles II, the English Civil War, and the rise of Cromwell is the far more interesting narrative. Partially because its more historically relevant, but mainly because its way sexier. Wars (3 of them!) dictators, the Lord Protector, genocide. The Star Chamber. I mean seriously The Lord Protector came and saved them all from the Star Chamber--where else in world history (let alone english history) do you get anything that cool.
Great advice! I am actually pretty close to your ideas (as close as you can be in a world history class taught in the U.S.). I actually hit on the English Bill of Rights and Petition of Right a little later in the year. I also briefly cover the English Civil War. I often wish that I could teach this class over the span of two years... I have to "yada yada yada" over so much cool stuff.