History of Social Studies Education, 1880-2020

“Wilson warned that: ‘The size of the modern democracy necessitates the exercise of persuasive power by dominant minds in the shaping of popular judgements…’ Those trusted ‘dominant minds’ that should exercise the new leadership and try to socialize the old Anglo-Saxon ideals on the newcomers, Wilson suggested, were the educated members of the Protestant elite. In their efforts to exert their leadership to reshape American society and to socialize the new immigrants and African Americans into passively accepting the leadership of their ‘betters,’ many Progressive reformers focused their attention on educational reform.” (Johnson, 73)

Woodrow Wilson, then an academic, recognized the importance of having a thriving, modern democracy. However, despite promoting a democracy, Wilson believed that education, especially social studied education, must be taught by the dominant minds of the superior white man; the superior white man had the responsibility to weaponize education against new immigrants and newly freed African Americans to socialize them and remind them of their place in this democracy.

"While historians supported history in schools because of their belief in the power of the ‘scientific’ and modernized discipline, and its value in educating both judgement and knowledge, their underlying motives included status politics and a conservative nation-building impulse. The history taught in the nation’s schools in the era around and after the turn of the century was both tradition and conservative. It served to glorify the nation’s past by instituting fact, myth, and legend…” (Evans, 19)

At its inception, social studies education in America was a propaganda machine; the purpose of teaching the youth about our history was to keep the status quo of American exceptionalism, Christian values, and slanted stories of how this great nation came to be. The focus of social studies education was not to provide students with facts and skills to create their own conclusions with those facts, but to ingest the narrative that had been crafted with the image of our nation at its core.

"Early in its pages, the 1916 report offered a definition of social studies as 'those whose subject matter relates directly to the organization and development of human society, and to man as a member of social groups.'" (Evans, 24)

The 1916 Report of the Social Studies Committee of the NEA Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education is often cited as the foundation of social studies education in the United States, however, it lacks a solid basis for what students should be learning. This is a change from the intended purpose of history prior to 1916 on keeping the status quo, this event emphasizes man as a member of social groups, but no one else.

“A related study funded by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) through Teachers College investigated, among other things, what happened in classrooms by observing almost 50 classes and over 2,000 children in 16 schools (8 activity and 8 regular) between 1937 and 1939. While expressing some dismay over how their instruments failed to capture fully the sharp distinctions between classrooms that they saw, they did find that the ‘average’ activity class was different from the ‘average’ control one by:
o More outward appearance of pupil self-direction
o More diversity and a larger range of (tasks), especially during certain periods of the day
o More projects of the sort that correlate various enterprises and skills as distinguished from the study of isolated subject matter
o A considerably larger display of the pupil’s handiwork” (Cuban, 70)

In this event, we see a shift from the 1916 Report of the Social Studies Committee of the NEA Commission; what was once a loose definition of the intent of social studies is finally put into action in New York City Public Schools. However, there is no mention what topics are being taught; it is simply the observations of classroom management and logistics.

“The postwar era was a time of conformity and of economic prosperity, and a time during which American power around the globe was rivaled only by that of the Soviet Union. That rivalry, and the ideological struggle between the two industrial giants, between communism and capitalism, set a tone for the entire era. It was a tone of confrontation, secrecy, and self-righteousness, which established a pattern of attacks on academic freedom and freedom of speech that thought that affected schools ad society as nothing had before.” (Evans, 96)

Due to America's consumption with fear over the Red Scare, we begin to see a shift in American education. While social studied education in America was intended to indoctrinate citizens and socialize the immigrants, it emerged into a study that did not allow free speech or free though; without these two elements, education could not, and did not, flourish.

“The Supreme Court unanimously agrees that segregated schools are "inherently unequal" and must be abolished. Almost 45 years later in 1998, schools, especially in the north, are as segregated as ever.” (Race Forward, 2006)

While in theory, this event was a monumental leap toward equality, it never truly was implemented. Keeping in line with the intended purpose of social studied education in America, the wealthy white students received the resources to become successful, everyone else continued to learn in substandard environments, which has only contributed to the inequality gap we see today in 2020.

“As the 1950s came to a close, the social changes of the 1960s introduced a shift in national focus from competition with the Soviets to unrest over civil rights, the Vietnam War and international control over nuclear weapons. College students began demonstrating against an educational system that had emphasized adherence to national ideals and questioned the congruence with their own values. Educators recognized their concerns and pondered their own contribution to this sense of disillusionment. This began a movement toward a method of teaching that aimed at critical thinking as the most important outcome of education, and an end of promoting topics related to U.S. military priorities.” (Gregg, 15-16)

This event marks the first time a significant amount of citizens begin questioning the mythical American exceptionalism, nationalism, and Christian values that social studies education was created to spread. We begin to see a decrease in robotic rote memorization of facts and ideas, and begin to see an increase in nurturing individual skills like critical thinking and problem solving.

“A Supreme Court made up of Richard Nixon's appointees rules that schools may not be desegregated across school districts. This effectively legally segregates students of color in inner-city districts from white students in wealthier white suburban districts.” (Race Forward, 2006)

We continue to see a trend in separating minority students, this time students of color in the inner-city, from white students in wealthier suburban areas. This relates back to the very first post on the timeline, Woodrow Wilson’s Warning, about making sure the white, Angelo-Saxon controlled the historical narrative that should be echoed throughout classrooms. It seems that almost 100 years later, education is separated between the wealthy whites and everyone else.

“The standards movement was launched amid the mythical national crisis in education based upon the charge that our schools were in dire condition and largely to blame for the U.S. decline in international economic competition… However, a lack of meaningful discourse about the mythical crisis resulted in a national obsession with fixing schools. Proposals included returning to basic subjects such as history and geography, developing a national curriculum, and using standardized tests to assess student knowledge.” (Evans, 163)

With the publishing of A Nation at Risk, we see a massive shift in society wanting to quantifying education. Gone are the ideals of free thought, free speech, critical thinking and problem solving; instead, we have standardized tests that tell us what to think and how to think it.

“Although public outcries follow reports that an alarming rate of children are not able to locate North Dakota, Japan, or Moscow on a map, rarely are the underlying assumptions implied by this agitated concern seriously questioned. Why ought children to know the location of various states or cities? What are the educational requirements of an informed, functioning citizenry?” (Wong, 34)

This marks a counterpoint to the gaining movement of standards based education, which was first introduced in 1983. This perspective, along with the standards based perspective, are the who reigning opponents in social studies education today.