Before this piece begins, I would like to first apologize for lack of activity on this website resulting in what would appear to be, rightfully, a lack of faith in the original goals and ideals of this website. There is no excuse for the inactivity. I wish I had been as active as I had been just a year ago but I am unfortunately only human. The circumstances need no explaining. It has been very difficult for me to arrive at the conclusion that the problems I aim to cure are simply bigger than myself and as a result, I have dialed back my focus so that it is narrowed back down to my first priority, the students I am directly responsible for. So with all that said, here are some thoughts on Social Studies within the current framework of America's current education focus.
(Author’s note: Usually for a submission
such as this, I would prefer to compile a great deal of research and factual
notes along with a detailed bibliography in order to put forth the most compelling
argument possible for such a pivotal topic. I wanted to put this out there as soon as possible though so time constraints have made this difficult. Though it will lack citations and
sources, the issues are real, the arguments are based off my own background
knowledge of the issue, and the message should ring true for any Social Studies
teacher working in today’s educational landscape. In the future I plan to add more concrete research and thus, a more compelling argument and article on the issue at hand. Until then, we have only a piece to pique some curiosity into the subject.)
The
Old Testament. The Holy Bible. The Koran.
Plato’s Republic. Machiavelli’s
The Prince. Aristotle’s Politics. Darwin’s Origin of Species. Martin Luther’s 95 Theses Locke’s Two
Treatises of Government. Rousseau’s
Social Contract. Hobbes’ Leviathan. The Magna Carta. Common Sense by Thomas Paine. Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and the
Federalist Papers. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by
Harriet Beecher Stowe. Karl Marx’s The
Communist Manifesto. Mein Kampf by Adolf
Hitler. The Geneva Conventions Treaties. Sayyid Qutb’s Milestones.
These
are just a few of some of the most influential writings that have shaped the
history of our world and each of them has played a role in setting the stage
for how the world will look when the 21st century comes to a close
in less than 90 years. They are the
works of students of history, political science, philosophy, science, religion,
and more. Some writings have had negative
impacts on history while most have had largely positive impacts. Individually, they have impacted specific time
periods or regions. Collectively, they
have defined the world as we know it today.
And yet, with the way secondary education is trending today in America,
somehow these works, along with the rest of the curriculum content of Social
Studies and the other social sciences, have become marginalized in the grand
scheme of improving student achievement.
Why
do I say that? I say that because today
in America, we have directed the focus of secondary education toward Reading/Language
Arts and Math standardized test scores as well as a new buzzword acronym called
STEM. (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) To be absolutely clear, there is nothing wrong
with focusing on these things. Reading/Language
Arts and Math proficiency are vitally important in molding academically
competent young adults and there is most certainly a great demand in our modern
economy for experts in all of the STEM fields.
The importance of directing focus to these three areas cannot be
understated; sustaining success and improving upon these is a major piece of
the puzzle going forward in the 21st century for the United States
of America.
Unfortunately,
in the process of directing focus toward these areas, the Federal government, state
governments, and local districts are overlooking the weight of everything that the
Social Studies discipline encompasses.
Let
us first begin by acknowledging the logical reasoning behind the importance of
standardized testing. All across the
United States of America, individual teachers with unique methods and forms of
assessing their students, execute their lessons and implement their grading
systems as they embark upon each academic year evaluating whether or not
students have demonstrated comprehension of the requisite subject matter. While it would be convenient to simply trust
all teachers and their judgment in evaluating students, in a time when student
achievement seems to have declined overall, there must be a certain standard of
proficiency that all teachers can be measured by so that we can accurately
assess whether students are learning what is required of them.
In
order to measure that proficiency, standardized testing has become our go to
device. There was a time when Social
Studies was considered a core subjects and it was even included in standardized
testing but over recent years, the subject has slowly been fazed out of the
core that is tested in these uniform assessments. It is undeniable that we, as a nation, have
prioritized to focus drastically more on Reading and Math scores. And it needs to be stated once more that they
do need focus. They are foundational
skills that are needed in order to succeed in the world of academics. However, Social Studies cannot suffer
de-emphasis in pursuit of this increased student achievement. It is a subject that can only add value to
student achievement and de-emphasizing it could leave future generations
without the requisite knowledge to repair the fundamental problems facing our
government today.
Science
is another core subject that has been fazed out of standardized testing but
fortunately for Science, secondary schools and colleges alike are promoting STEM
in order to keep pace with an ever-evolving technological world. There is an extra demand for college
graduates in these STEM fields and thus, the subject of Science remains
strategically important to secondary schools, once again, at the expense of
focus on Social Studies. In today’s
modernized economy, there is very high demand for STEM skills while at the same
time, there is a short supply of STEM skilled employees. There is absolutely nothing to suggest that
the STEM fields should not be promoted.
They should be promoted heavily; our standing in the world economy
depends on our ability as a country to remain one of the top innovators
developing effective technology regularly to help improve the quality of life
on this planet. Without an ability to
spur this innovation and development with a steady supply of STEM skilled
workers, our nation could undoubtedly take steps backward. With all that said, let us move on to the
significance of giving equal weight to the Social Studies discipline.
As
mentioned earlier, Social Studies is becoming a forgotten subject in a quest to
improve student achievement in America.
But why is it that we should make every effort possible to not forget
about this ever-important subject?
The
answer is simple. Social Studies
encompasses literally every single important discipline that is being
prioritized today. That is what history,
the foundational component within Social Studies, is all about. First let us look at Reading. How did Reading become so important?
Some time during the beginning of human civilization over in
Mesopotamia, it was thought that information needed to be recorded
somewhere. Humans developed ways to
write down information on different kinds of surfaces and that information was
to be remembered and recalled upon when needed.
Soon enough, Hammurabi’s Code, a set of written laws, were written in
order to ensure that this civilization had some sort of standard to live
by. We decided as a species that there
should be some order to our experience here on earth so that we could limit
chaos and uncertainty.
Over
the years, the uses of reading and writing evolved and took on forms besides
laws. Families soon recorded their
family histories. Elderly humans wrote
down stories of their experiences so that they could pass on lessons to future
generations. Individuals began to move
away from their families but could still communicate with them through written
correspondence. Generations passed and
reading began to evolve further. Now
people were reading and writing not just for necessary purposes like recording
information or communicating, now reading and writing was being used for
fun. People wrote poems and read them to
friends so everyone could observe and appreciate their surroundings
together. It was being used for pleasure
and entertainment; humans were actually writing plays and putting on performances
so that several people could gather together to appreciate the art of theater
and entertain themselves when they were not tending to their farms or other
business. Now people could even make
money with the written word. While at
one point, reading and writing was used to convey basic lessons to future
generations, it soon became a method of transferring huge swaths of information
and knowledge to anyone around the world so that someone in one region could
attain the same understanding of any subject as someone in a completely
different region. Thus began the human
history of the written word, grammar rules, reading comprehension, and the
entire variety of languages that we use to understand these words and sentences
mashed together that provide us intelligence.
Social Studies reminds us of the how and why we are able to read at all.
In
teacher training programs across the country, it is well known that in order to
motivate students to learn the material we are trying to convey to them, it is
our duty to make them understand why they are learning it. What is the point of knowing grammar if one
does not understand why we use
it? Why should students
appreciate Shakespeare or Greek Tragedies if they do not recognize why theater
and entertainment became significant or how it affected the time periods they
were used in? Why do students try
frustratingly to figure out why a2 + b2 = c2
should matter to them. Social Studies
can tell them that for hundreds of years mathematicians in places like
Babylonia, India, and even China had tinkered around with some form of this
equation until finally the Greek mathematician, Pythagoras made clear that the
formula does indeed work when used with right triangles. Then students can understand the context of
how it came to be and subsequently realize what type of benefit that knowing
the theorem can provide in a real world situation. Without the context of Social Studies, there
is no answer for the why when students eventually ask,
“Why do we have to learn this?”
In
addition to setting context for other subjects, Social Studies also requires
students to utilize the skills used in both Reading/Language Arts and
Math. While critical thinking responses
are generated in Social Studies, writing, grammar, spelling, and many other
analytical skills relevant to Language Arts are utilized and continually
improved upon. When analyzing wars, army
sizes, casualty numbers, economic effects, and other factors all require
students to recall their math skills.
These are only a couple of examples but the point remains. Social Studies allows students to refine
skills necessary for standardized testing while at the same time enriching
themselves with knowledge about the history of human civilization.
If
you move on to the STEM subjects as a whole, the entire STEM focus is rooted in
history and Social Studies. Advances in
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics simply cannot happen in the
course of world history without Social Studies.
Someone had to record information in a given field, distribute that
information to others, and then that knowledge needed to be transferred,
consumed, refined, and eventually the advances could evolve. Where did the Wright Brothers get the idea
that a flying machine was possible to create?
How did Alexander Hamilton get the idea that a waterfall could generate
the energy needed to power factories spurring the Industrial Revolution? What made Albert Einstein think relativity
was a topic worth exploring? How has
Marie Curie’s discovery of radium affected developments across the 20th
and 21st centuries? How were
the first bridges built and how did the technology advance? How powerful were the bombs used at Hiroshima
and Nagasaki and what are the capabilities of today’s nuclear weapons? What important things did the splitting of
the atom lead to? The list can go on and
on but the point here is simply to demonstrate that none of the remarkable
advances in innovation amongst the STEM disciplines is possible without the
transfer of information and knowledge from person to person. Social Studies remains the ultimate medium
for that transfer.
Finally,
Social Studies, as noted in the beginning, plays an even larger role in how
society as a whole is shaped. At the
beginning of this piece, several influential writings were listed that have had
a significant effect on how human history has shaped today’s world. Let us start with the first three listed, the
Old Testament, the Holy Bible, and the Koran.
Here you have three of the major religions in the world wrapped up into
three separate books. From the Old
Testament, Judaism was born, the Ten Commandments came into existence, and
monotheism became mainstream in a world that had previously been mainly polytheistic. Then Jesus Christ, a known Jew, began to
preach his own set of values, gained a set of followers, and eventually his
words became the basis for the world’s most prevalent religion, Christianity,
rooted in the Holy Bible. As
Christianity aged, a man named Muhammed frequented a cave often to pray and
seclude himself. Eventually he would
reveal that he retreated to the cave because he was a prophet and messenger of
God. Soon the Koran was born and the region
known as Middle East, would become a region dominated by the Muslim
religion. The effects of each of these
developments still reverberate throughout our modern world.
In
Ancient Greece, Plato put forth various rationalizations for the ways societies
ought to be organized and we still look back on his insights today. Aristotle put forth a foundation of work that
would show politicians of all future generations exactly how to maintain a
stable society. Niccolò Machiavelli
would build upon this foundation and craft a handbook on the ways in which
rulers could harness
and increase their reigns of
power while at the same time ensuring a stable and efficient society. Time passed and Thomas Hobbes showed us just
how barbaric man could be without the rule of law in place to restrain our
natural urges and actions. John Locke
and Jean-Jaques Rousseau would build upon Hobbes’ theory to explain how a civil
society must resolve conflict and maintain order in Hobbes’ state of nature by
way of a social contract amongst inhabitants.
Locke even set the stage for modern American Democracy when he implanted
the ideas of separation of powers, religious tolerance, and the right of a
people to revolt when the social contract is broken.
Soon in the newly European inhabited
North America, Thomas Paine published “Common Sense”, a pamphlet declaring the
virtue in revolution against a broken social contract, and it sparked a
revolutionary fervor across the original thirteen colonies. Within months, the Continental Congress deliberated
the very issue of independence and eventually was left with little choice other
than to part ways with the empire of Great Britain. After depending on a miracle to win
independence, America was born but a severely flawed government was set up
leading to the creation of the United States Constitution. This Constitution put numerous fail-safe
mechanisms into place to prevent any one party from collecting too much power
and those features have allowed America to persist over 200 years now. It has helped us to become the most innovative
economic super power to lead the world into a modern age that many could never
have dreamed of. But even this
Constitution was not guaranteed an existence.
It took some of the most rationally developed and heavily researched arguments
to convince the public that this new government was essential to the future
success of America. Alexander Hamilton
and James Madison (with an assist from John Jay and the philosophers mentioned
above) worked tirelessly and swiftly to ensure these Federalist Papers were
widely and expediently distributed across the colonies to make an adopted US
Constitution a reality.
Before too long, the unresolved issue
of slavery came to the forefront in America as the daily life of a slave was
detailed by Harriet Beecher Stowe in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”. Americans were finally awoken to the horrors
of slavery and the stage was set for Abraham Lincoln, intent on holding the
union together, to help eradicate the institution of slavery. But then we had a 20th century
filled with frightening inhumanity as the ideas of Karl Marx’s “Communist
Manifesto” were butchered by a human named Joseph Stalin. To follow that up, racism was never so evident
as it was in Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” that preceded the Holocaust. Fortunately, from these horrific events,
progress did occur in many parts of the world especially in our nation during
the Civil Rights Movement led by Martin Luther King and other brilliant minds
and brilliant words. But not enough
progress has yet been made and we now sit here, thirteen years removed from the
beginning of the new millenium, wondering how this world will look in the next
ten to twenty years.
We live in an America where the
credibility of the brilliant Constitution has been thrown into question. We have taken many steps backward in the name
of human rights as a decade of fear from terrorism threatened the very freedoms
we all take for granted. The entire
world economy was brought to its knees on account of greed and corruption from
our nation’s political and financial leaders, destroying the bank accounts of
average, hard working families all over the world. The main stream media that we all indulge for
news is also guilty of shoddy, special interests and corporate greed causing
distortion of the facts that Americans need to know. Now more than ever, Americans have zero
confidence in their government’s ability to address the massive deficits on the
horizon thanks to an aging population, social security pay outs, and
skyrocketing health care costs that could cripple our economy in the next 10-20
years. Only 15% of Americans approve of
the way our legislature is doing its job and it is fair to surmise that most of
the population simply does not see a way to force these incumbent, firmly
entrenched, easily influenced by special interests elected politicians to do
their jobs responsibly. And what happens in America, whether we like it or not,
has reverberating effects all over the world as we remain the country that can
exert the most influence on the economy of the world.
This is why de-emphasis of the Social
Studies discipline would be a disaster heading forward in American
education. Without students finding
Social Studies to be a priority, who is going to keep tabs on and hold decision
makers accountable for the policies that have damaged our nation’s interests so
badly and threaten our prestige further?
Will the greatest young minds gravitate toward political science if they
know the real reward comes only from performing well in Reading, Math, and STEM
subjects? Elementary teachers all across
the country are already burdened with a demand to improve Reading and Math
scores and as a result, they are forced to ignore the Social Studies portion of
their curriculum or spend very little time on it overall. Fortunately, middle and high school levels
have not quite reached that extreme just yet but we seem to be trending that
way as the new Common Core Standards are implemented nationwide with the sole
focus being Reading and math.
Personally, as a staunch historian,
lover of politics, and hopeful agent of change, even I have struggled with the
battle against Social Studies as I have considered acquiring a Math education certification
in order to increase my chances of employment within the education system. That is a sad indictment of the way things
are. I am in love with teaching my
subject and getting young people interested and even excited about the
fascinating things one can glean from the study of history, government,
economics, or geography. And even with
that love, someone like me, thanks to difficult circumstances, has considered
an alternative route that would take me away from conveying this wonderful
knowledge to young people. I want to
inspire the next Martin Luther King, the next Abraham Lincoln, or the next
George Washington so that this next great leader can come in and overcome all
the obstacles that I have yet to surpass in trying to transform this country,
and the world, for the better.
More
than any other time in our nation’s history, the solution to our education and
national problems as a whole, demands an all encompassing, comprehensive answer
that focuses on improving everything across the board. De-emphasizing the Social Studies discipline
in education will cause academics and the economy in this country to miss the
forest for the trees. Social Studies
teaches us the very foundation of principles, checks, balances, reporting, and
history that allows a nation to hold leaders accountable and propel itself
forward away from the greed, corruption, and collapse that has doomed empires in
the past. Empires that have persisted
much longer than our young nation. Show
me a citizenry with a passion for the honorable ideals that have progressed the
human race in a positive fashion, and I will show you a nation that can thrive
in every imaginable way in the 21st century and beyond. This was the type of citizenry that allowed
our country to reach the greatest heights any nation has ever seen and that is
what we as a people must return to in order to propel past those previous
heights.
To
do that, it is imperative that education in this country does not forget this fact. In pursuit of increased student achievement
in Reading, Math, and STEM in America, Social Studies must remain an equal part
of that equation.
