Website Introduction

Social Studies for the Twenty-First Century

Plan for Companion Website

by Jack Zevin

 

Social studies is adapting to a vast wave of ‘reform’ sweeping education, some of it serious and thoughtful, some top down orders demanding ‘results.’ The system is divided in its demands, however, seeking rapid increases in test scores based largely on recall, while simultaneously demanding critical thinking. Common Core, the NCSS 3C standards, and the many subject area standards, history and the social sciences, all call for teachers to use facts and ideas to promote an ‘arc of inquiry,’ a basis for critical thinking.

Teaching as a profession has long had a penchant for telling, telling, telling, but is now asked to embrace the notion of higher-order levels of thinking as primary. This includes a wide range of skills like personal development; community participation; building human capital; networking; intellectual, moral, and psychomotor growth; and open-mindedness. Higher-order objectives also demand very different teaching methods than the communication of content.

In short, creating thinking citizens requires an attitude of welcoming ideas by teachers: both mainstream and alternative ideas, combined with active participation in a project to build and enhance classroom democracy. Social studies in this view serves as a prelude to taking part in a larger democratic process. Conceive of the classroom as a public space, a theater of learning, a public forum, and a place for thinking out loud.

Classroom theater basically has three major components: ‘actress/actors,’ the teachers, the audience, and the curriculum or materials of instruction. Surrounded by a school, community, and a social context and culture, this classroom supports or inhibits democratic discourse in varying degrees.

This companion website is offered to extend the fourth edition classroom to include activities that tie in with the civic, historical, and social science mission of Social Studies for the Twenty-First Century.

Within the classroom, there is limited time and space for teaching and learning. Time is a finite quantity and there is opportunity choice for materials covered. If we choose to teach one topic, we have implicitly given up another topic. On a topic you choose, therefore, supplements are offered for each chapter providing engagements and exercises missing from reading the text alone.

The skills of finding the right evidence and playing with ideas are at least as valuable, or perhaps more so, than the information itself. Problem finding and research are skills that improve human capital for both you and your students. The companion website activities are aimed at helping refine search and discovery skills.

Teachers of grades 7 through 12 can aid individuals, groups, and communities to acquire attitudes and skills for creativity and democracy and are invited to experiment with the varied activities and presentations in our companion website. We hope you have fun with your social studies classes by applying one or more of these engagements to your pupils.