The last paragraph sure puts things in perspective.

How can we understand today if we have not idea of the past. As that last pargagraph says we need to understand history to get it right today.

Keep in mind that Social Studies is not history. It is a combination of history, geography,and a little philosophy. It is an absolute shame what we have done to teaching history. As a history teacher, I watched geography and geography teachers go by the way side. I listened to individuals who proclaimed that history teachers could teach geography in their classes. I attempted to explain that certainly we did that and could do more only we were watering down both subjects in so doing. Histroy is the most important of subjects. You need to know about this nation and what we stand for. As we watch our country fall apart we are watching the number one nation in the world passing into oblivion. My students use to ask me why we always had to take the lead. The answer is simple, no one else could do it. Now we are a nation at war with ourselves and in so doing we now have the enemy within ready to destroy us because we do not teach history and government as separate but needed classes. History is the foundation. When the foundation of your house is crumbling your house is not far behind. Demand that history is put back in your schools and damn the PSSA testing

No Child Left Behind needs to be left behind.

Unfortunately our whole country is being left behind because of poor math skills. While I agree these other subjects are important, its math and science skills that will determine whether we are leaders or followers in the future. Once we stop innovating and creating new technology, we are doomed to second class status.

Andrew
Let me put it another way. When others are in trouble who do they call? Is i7 China, Russia, France, or England? The answer none of the above. It is the USA that shows up when there is trouble. We have helped others through everything from volcanic eruptions, and floods to major military matters. It is and has been the US who is expected to show up and help the rest of the world. Understand that I have no problem with us doing that. The questions that are out there, however, are huge and mainly they revolve around our ability to get there. We have now reduced our Navy to something under 300 ships. We were close to 600. Thomas Jefferson saw no need for a large navy built by John Adams;. Jefferson was only to happy to have them when he went after the Islamic pirates in the Med and along the Barbary Coast. Historically let me note that Jefferson got a copy of the Koran, went through it and like the Jefferson Bible,, he created his own Koran. He was a perpetual student and was an extremely important party to the creation of America. There is information coming out now that it appears that he paid his slaves because he was unable to free them at the time. History is the most important subject of the nation and we need to teach it as that and not a mixture of various subjects

We are way off the track here. This isn't a moral argument about whether the United States should be "the global police." But I would say that this argument is a good illustration of why an education in history, geography and world events is essential. How can we be good citizens in a democracy without an understanding of history, current events and the world around us?

I may be asking for too much, but I would expect that any competent, non specialized teacher, as a learned person, would have the knowledge to teach 6th grade social studies. This is not meant to be an insult to teacher, but a complement. In my mind, the worst thing that is lost in combining 6th grade SS with "English" would be the loss of time spent on those two subjects.

Anectodotally, my sixth grade English and SS teacher, Mrs. Herman, did a more than adequate job in the matters covered. She also taught sections of 7th and 8th English (but not SS) at the same time in a very small school that had just two and half teachers for those three grades.

Also, my 8th grade history and SS studies teacher, Mr. Leonard, in another much larger school, was one of my top three teachers ever, and he was actually an English teacher for most of his time.

Social studies integrates the fields of economics, sociology, psychology, and history to seek to understand universal principles that govern how people behave in groups. An educated person is not necessarily qualified to teach social studies. For example, Ted, can you answer these essential questions, which randomly illustrate what I mean?
1. What is the difference between power and authority?
2. How is ideology used to achieve a following and what does ideology mean to power figures vs. authority figures?
3. What factors are necessary for the orderly working of any organization--both corporate and governmental?
4. How can one separate ideology from fact in the reading of historical documents?
5. How does the French Revolution provide a paradigm for all revolutions?
6. Was the American "revolution" really a revolution? Or was it a civil war between two economic systems in which the side that initiated the rebellion won?
7. What is the role of a constitution in a society and how is a constitution kept relevant, i.e. "living"?
8. How does one explain the universal alternation between centralization and decentralization of government institutions?
9. What is "rationalization" as applied to social structures and how has it affected the lives of individuals?
10. What is the relationship between religious and political ideologies?

This is hardly an orderly or a definitive list of issues but I hope it illustrates the importance and specialized nature of social studies.

Daryl, you're right, we are off track and I am responsible. What I was getting around to, while expecting another response from Chris Miller, is that if this nation were not fighting senseless wars on behalf of the banks and military industrial establishment, there would be plenty of money to fund education of all kinds in our schools.

Andrew
Let's recall for a moment what we were told about Iraq. The initial story did indeed state that Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction. Hussein played cute with the US and UN on the issue. Foreign intelligence reported WMD's. Our intelligence and military reported the same. Colin Powell reported WMD's in Iraq. Democrats and Republicans agreed and made comments that Hussein was a bad guy. Some still believe that one day these WMD's will appear. In short this was a real mess. Should we have gone into Iraq or wait until Iraq made the first move and in the process killed others. The Iraq War is not going to go down well in the history books. I prefer Washington's comments that we grow as a nation, stary strong, pick our friends carefully, and work with out enemies putting our republican form of government on display as often as we can. Beware of getting into bed with the wrong people. This does not mean that we should not give emergancy assistance and deal diplomatically with our enemies. And let me add that degrading out presidents, and i must admit I am guilty of same, is not the way to go. These men are as human as you and me and we should ask what we would do if found in the same position.

A "learned" person need not lose sleep about other people's opinions because he could just cull the facts from fiction with ease...We go to school to absorb as much knowledge as we can and accept those that we think are guides to live our lives with...Social Studies, for what they are worth, are fine.

Good morning Chris. Good point, let's recall "what we were told about Iraq" which was false. The WMDs may have been nerve gases, they weren't nuclear as implied by the Bush administration, and they weren't capable of being used against the United States via ICBMs. Also, there are now records available through the Freedom of Information Act which prove that an invasion of Iraq was being planned prior to 9/11.

Anyway, I stand by my earlier post, I don't think that our young military men and women should be going anywhere to fight unless American soil has come under attack. W was and is a liar, and in my view is responsible for war crimes. I'm a registered Republican by the way.

What if the hundreds of billions of dollars, if not the trillions, spent to fight the Iraq war(s) were used for education? If not all for education, how about alternative energy research, or infrastructure improvement here at home? How much better off would we be? Instead all we have to show for the effort is thousands of killed or injured American service men and women and massive debt for the money that had to be printed to fund the fighting.

Lastly, can you explain why we are not actively fighting in Africa if our foreign policy is to help out the oppressed all over the world?

The study of history, and social studies in general, would help us to answer this question of why we went to war in Iraq. It was not about WMDs and it was not to spread democracy and it was not to overthrow a dictator. Other countries have more threatening weapons than Iraq and other countries had equally oppressive leaders. Iraq is part of our larger policy that involves developing capitalism in the Middle East, organizing a global economy in ways that serve the economic titans at the steering wheel of this process, and, to a lesser degree (though also important) shifting our emphasis from solving the Palestinian problem first--and thus improving our relations with the larger Arab world, to improving our relations with the larger Arab world--and thus improving prospects for a peace with the Palestinians. (Please note that the Palestinians are hardly an independent entity; they are proxies for Iran and other countries who seek to oppose America's long term economic strategy for the Middle East.) So while the discussion about Iraq is relevant, it is only going to be well-informed if writers apply principles of "social studies" to the facts that they see. We are easily misled by journalists and others who stand too close to the picture to see it whole.

Just because one is a "learned person" does not make him the holder of all historical knowledge between is ears. Indeed, history, as well as other disciplines, are constantly changing. Allow me a quick example. A civil war officer is keeping a diary of the battles he has fought. Today he fights Battle X but due to all the commotion including moving from one place to another a moment to wirite about Battle X might not come until next week. How reliable will that report be? How about liars in history? Has that happened and been discovered? Along with teaching history the student must be exposed to critical reading and thinking. All of this and more applies to obtaining knowledge and again all the items tossed into Social Studies make it difficult to concentrate on exactness.

Facts are not enough. Each fact is like a dot in those children's puzzles with numbered dots that, traced, create a picture. Only the dots in our world (that is, the facts) are not numbered. So we end up drawing different pictures, different conclusions. The principles of human behavior in groups, learned from the study of the past and from the social sciences, help us to connect the right dots in the right order to make a correct picture. That is why the study of history is so vital.

I think that you mean that "if you cannot connect the dots then you are not a learned person." But that assumes that there is one correct picture and that the purpose of history is to tell the "true" story of events. There is no "true" story. There is only our different stories. Some are more true to the facts and some are more fanciful. But all we have is our stories. Only God knows the total true story.

Further regarding my comment above to Chris Miller: You cannot explain the holocaust by explaining Hitler. You have to explain the economic conditions of Germany after WW I, the history of anti-Semitism in Germany and eastern Europe since at least Martin Luther, the panicky fear of Bolshevism rising in the East, the failure of Germany to overcome its late unification and thus failure to keep up with the leading industrial nations of western Europe, its attachment to the outdated 19th c. embrace of nationalism, etc. These are all factors that allowed Hitler to win his war against the Jews of Germany even as he was losing his war against the Allies.

Jonathan
You have defined a number of items that in turn open alot of doors containing lots of information. One could spend a lifetime on the history of the Jews in Europe and additional time on the banking suitation in Germany during the time after WW I

Yes. As Margie Peterson implied in her column. History is interesting. History is fun. History is necessary. Just as we need to understand math and science to understand the world we live in, we need to understand history, too. Schools should seek to sharpen and to satisfy our curiosity, not only prepare us for PSSAs or for jobs. Lots of people in finance and industry majored in English or history. These subjects also teach one how to think critically.
You know, a critical study of religion is also very rewarding. We haven't mentioned that yet, but religion is also one of the "social studies." I might begin a course in religion by asking students to define religion. (I think no one has yet done this successfully.) Then I'd explore the difference between political ideologies and religious ideologies. Then I'd examine the messianic dimensions in both, since both tend to say, "If you follow this program (Christianity, Judaism, socialism, democracy, etc.) properly it would bring about the messianic age. How do leaders use this sense of messianism to strengthen their following? What are major differences between western religion and religions of the east and why? How much should religion seek to motivate us to change the world and how much should it help us to accept it? Drop "social studies" and you also lose out on exploring these great questions.

I had the opportunity to have 9 credit hours of religion at Moravian College. One had to take the Old and New Testaments for 6 credit hours then select an elective. As I approached areas of the world while teaching other religions would emerge and religion would be incorporaated into the class. I had viewed religious works as books of history and I still do today There was a lot of interest by students in the religion of the various people we were studying.

Chris,
You write above that you believe that matters of "infra-structure and education" should "mostly be handled at the local level." Can you explain what you mean by this? Roads? Curriculum? And why?

We are spending tons of money on expensive projects. The questions are out there. Should we keep our schools local and affordable or should we continue to build schools so we can maintain class size at whatever the magic number happens to be? We spend approximately $14 thousand per pupile per year in NASD. How about all the roads we have. The Inter-state highway system was lauded but did anyone think about the cost of maintaining it. How many trillions have we spent to maintain the Interstate system? Due to absurb zoning of 1 acre lots when we should have made them 5 or 10 acre lots, we have created a highway monster. Would we have all the roads we have in our local communities had we zoned better. Today we denigrate capitalism as an economic system and the reason for that is that we have not seen true capitalism for well over a century. Once we had the joining of business and politics capitalism was doomed. Imagine how our young teenagers are looking at what apparently seems to be very bleak future. Keep in mind the local control is not an ideal situation but a lot of that has come about due to federal and state regulations. There is work to be done.

We are in the midst of WWIII. The extremists and terrorists are winning. Not only are we enthralled in acts of war with countries abroad, we are also in the middle of battle internally in our own country. They are winning. WE are losing. Education is where it starts.

I am a supporter of no child left behind...it has a great message to build a stronger adult from education throughout their childhood. However, there is a lot of evidence it is not working as we had hoped.

We are losing the battle...and once the education is gone, the ability to take charge becomes less of a threat.

WTF.

No, Wildredo. There's no contradiction. Everyone draws a different picture. Re-read what I wrote about looking at a mountain from east or from the west. Everyone sees things from a different perspective. Each "picture" of what happened is "true," but only in a subjective sense. Thus history is always being re-written as new perspectives and new information give us new "dots" to connect and new angles at which to examine an event.

It's the next logical step in the dumbing down of America. We can't have these kids understanding things like The Constitution or the responsibilities of living as citizen in a Free country. We can't have them walking around with knowledge of History. How are we going to have them vote in Socialism if they were taught the truth about how it doesn't work and really isn't Socialism but always turns out to be tyranny. How are we going to get them to follow Obama like sheep, accept World Government and the redistribution of wealth if they actually have that pesky thing called knowledge.

Jon
We have allowed our governments to get bigger, more intrusive and more expensive. If we put the local communities in charge and allowed the labarotory the Founders discussed I think we could do more with less because we did not send the money to Harrisburg and Washington where they can collect their portion and send some back to us. I also believe that teaching the history of one's area is a great place to introduce kids to the subject. How many youngsters in our are know that Easton was one of three communities where the Declaration of Independence was read. How many know that we have a state constitution as well as our Federal Constitution. Do they know what a township, county or other entity exists in the immediate area.Are they aware of a local cemetary where 20+ revolutionary war veterans are buried? As to local prejudices do you think they don't exist already in our area as well as our nation. My goodness just look at the mess and Sanford, FL

And Chris, it's a law of nature (and thus important for "social studies") that nothing in life remains static. Everything either grows or declines. Groups, McDonalds, MLB, religious denominations, the human body, corporations, government.

For those who still doubt the value of social studies, here is an article addressing just this question, to be published in the May 24 issue of The New Republic, by a professor of philosophy at Columbia University. I know that some readers believe that their opinions are as informed and have as much merit as those of an ivy league professor, but for those willing to talk less and listen more (and thus continue to learn) I offer this:

The Trouble with Scientism:
Why history and the humanities are also a form of knowledge--

http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/magazine/103086/scientism-humanities-knowledge-theory-everything-arts-science?page=0,0