Social Studies Education

Social Studies versus Historical Studies

Although the National Education Association's Committee on the Social Studies used a similar definition to create the field in 1918, critics have complained that the effect is to reduce the importance of historical studies and to replace it with mindless activities. For example, in 1987, conservative historians focused on a commission report sponsored by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation to explore the conditions that would contribute to the effective teaching of history and to make recommendations on the role history should play in the curriculum. Named the Bradley Commission, the group included former presidents of all major professional associations in history, winners of prestigious prizes for writing and scholarship, and classroom teachers.

Complaining that 15% of the high school students in the United States did not take any U.S. history courses and nearly half did not enroll in courses in either world history or Western civilization, the Bradley Commission noted in 1987 that during the previous 5 years, several commissions had asked teachers to devote more classroom time to the central academic core of the curriculum. The Bradley Commission members believed that the discipline of history deserved more concentrated attention because it enabled students to understand change and to recognize the continuities between eras in the past and the present time, enhanced personal growth among the students by offering a sense of identity, and encouraged intelligent citizenship by providing different examples of virtue, courage, and wisdom. The answer the commission report offered was for teachers to cover six themes important to historians: cultural diffusion; human interaction and the environment; values, beliefs, and institutions; conflict and cooperation; comparisons of developments such as feudalism or slavery; and patterns of social and political interaction.

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