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Matt DePalma
Methods
Rationale Paper: Why Should We Teach Social Studies?
December 12, 2016
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Social studies are an essential cornerstone of the education that our children receive

in schools across America. Without a social studies education, we are robbing our students

of the ability to learn ways to evaluate the world and to improve upon it. Essentially, what

would happen is that society would produce generations of individuals who are unable to

exercise democratic principles, and without this will become sheep that are easily

controlled by an oppressive government and/or tyrant. However, with strong social studies

instruction this can all be prevented as our students, who will eventually become citizens,

are challenged to make informative decisions using reasoned judgment, are challenged to

build tolerance for others and expand their views of the world, are challenged to use

evidence to evaluate people, ideas and events and social studies also will challenge students

to gain an appreciation for the world that they live in beyond their families, neighborhoods,

and schools calling for them to produce effective civil discourse to promote change for the

betterment of society.

One of the major goals for history education is to promote reasoned judgment

(Barton and Livstik, 37). This is extremely important because social studies, more so than

any other subject, questions students’ beliefs and tests them to develop their own positions

and to support these ideas with evidence. Throughout their social studies education,

students are always engaging with primary sources. These sources include images, film,

diaries, audio clips, music, diaries, newspapers, and artifacts from the time periods they are

studying. and are asked to analyze them and make hypotheses about their meanings in

order to better understand the world of yesterday. Through this, all students have to use

evidence to support their views of what they are studying.

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In today’s world this becomes very important. When citizens go to vote for their

president, they must evaluate information and sources about candidate information and

choices in order to make the best-informed decision. Where else in the school curriculum

can this occur without social studies?

Since social studies implore students to analyze sources and their credibility, they

are better equipped to uncover the “truth” in what they are seeing. Today, many students

have difficulty finding “truthful news”, fall subject to click bait articles and receive their

worldly news from biased sources. Social studies offer a space for students to develop

techniques to analyze the news and information around them today. Therefore, social

studies must be taught in order to develop students’ reasoned judgment to better utilize

evidence in their analysis of history and the current day. As students read primary sources

and analyze the information, views or arguments being presented, they can develop their

contextualized thinking. This is significant because as Samuel Wineburg writes, doing this

will help students “realize that words do not transcend time and space and have to be

evaluated by other material” (Wineburg, 4). This is essential to learn in schools because

even today students must realize that words and events occurring today can be subjected to

false information and we as a society must be able to figure out what is actually going on.

Social Studies also must be taught because it offers an expanded view of humanity

(Barton and Livstik 37). In their social studies classes, students develop their historical

empathy. In addition to using primary source information to make informed decisions and

action, students are also using them and learning about the past and today through

emotional connections to what they are learning. In doing so, students will gain an

appreciation with and can create connections to the past that fuel passions even today. By
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studying income inequality during the Gilded Age and seeing the conditions the urban poor

lived in during the 20th century, students often care about the struggles of the working class.

When teachers expand these connections to the present day, students can learn that not

much has even changed and students’ passions towards marginalized groups can be

fostered and in the future can become a spark for change.

“In order to best picture the past, social studies teaching must be appropriately

giving each aspect of history” (Wineburg, 5). Thanks to social studies education, students

are prompted to develop skills like seeing things through different eyes and views to better

understand other people. Through this analysis, students gain an appreciation for other

groups and develop an expanded view of humanity. However, other classes do not offer the

time to create this effect like social studies does and when this is done well, students learn

about other ways to do things, as well as take perspectives of other people into

consideration when it is time for them to deliberate over what is best for the common

good.

Moreover, as students are constantly being challenged to analyze different groups of

people, develop empathy as caring for others and begin to make reasoned judgments using

evidence, students develop an appreciation for the world they live in as well as be given an

opportunity to practice how to partake in changing the things they disagree with. Only

history can give students the information and skills to understand where we are, where we

have been and why we are who we are” and this is extremely important. (Mandell &

Malone, 1). Without social studies, students will have a much harder time making sense of

the world and producing effective changes in the future. Moreover, as students learn

history, they can also touch upon many of the great things about the world they live in. For
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example, in American history, students can learn about how different groups of people,

from the colonists, to suffragists, to Civil Rights leaders, all underwent hardships and fought

for the freedoms that many of us take for granted today. Reflecting on the accomplishments

of these men and women endured for our prosperity is also another great facet of a social

studies education.

However, the quintessential goal for teaching social studies is truly to prepare

students to partake in civil society. We are by no means a “perfect society”, however, if we

have a general populous aiming towards improvement and progress, social studies will be

the vehicle that gets us there. Social studies provide the proper and necessary space where

teachers and students work together and can “socialize future citizens to respect authority

and acquire common convictions and beliefs about what is important (Levine, 8). Social

studies teachers can provide small group exercises, simulations, and reflections where

students can practice collective action towards achieving goals in class. It also allows us to

develop ways to think about challenging authority if it is acting in the interest of few,

instead of for all. Students are constantly challenged in social studies to deliberate over the

common good with a focus around issues of justice in the past and today. In doing so,

students may not fall prey to authoritarian patriotism and be able to resist things they feel

are wrong. Using social studies, we are able to focus student’s thoughts on issues like social

injustice and encourage them to engage in social and political changes (Westheimer, 320)

Moreover, social studies teachers provide the space to train students to critically think

about politicians and analyze presidents, governors, and other positions of authority,

ensuring that they act in a just way for society.

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To conclude, social studies are an irreplaceable part of the k-12 experience because

students develop reasoned judgment using sources as evidence for decisions and thoughts,

historical empathy to understand multiple perspectives as well as caring for others, reflect

on the good in the world and how it is/was achieved and promote change for the

betterment of society in this course alone, more so than in any other aspect of their life. As

they continue to practice these skills using historical content, students are actively learning

how to “do history” through their schooling.

I used to believe that having students evaluate primary sources was a difficult task,

too difficult for some students even. However, throughout my own teacher preparation

program at the University of Connecticut, I have realized that when students do not

understand these types of documents it is often because the teacher did not provide

enough scaffolding and supports. However, when scaffolding and support are effectively

used throughout their entire history education, our society will reap the rewards of future

citizens who are successfully able to use the past to make sense of the present using

evidence for their thought processing and ultimately their decision-making. They are able

to discover cause and effect relationships in other aspects of life. They are able to view

ideas, events, and perspectives through other people’s eyes. Our future will have informed

citizens that are able to place their trust in government officials who use evidence to make

their claims. This is the ultimate goal for history education – to be able to make the world

better for everyone with citizens who are able to understand and to understand what it

actually means to be better. If it were not for social studies and history education, I would

be afraid for our future and for groups of individuals who could undermine the democratic

principles that make America and the world our student’s live in so great.
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Works Cited

Barton, K.C., & Levstik, L.S. (2004). Teaching history for the common good. Mahwah, N.J.:

Lawrence Erlbaum.

Levine, Thomas (n.d.) “Social studies classrooms as communities of practice that enable

social action”. Storrs, Connecticut. University of Connecticut.

Mandell, N., & Malone, B. (2007). Thinking like a historian: Rethinking history instruction: A

framework to enhance and improve teaching and learning. Madison,WI: Wisconson

Historical Society Press.

Westheimer, Joel. (2009) “Should SS Be Patriotic?”. Pledging Allegiance: The Politics of

Patriotism in America’s Schools. Teachers College Press.

Wineburg, S.S. (2001). Historical Thinking and other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of

Teaching the Past. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.