"Social Studies vs. "History; also a question about curriculum

Factual Questions
1

First part of the question is about semantics. It seems that in earlier grades, kids learn “Social Studies” which is a subject in which they learn about things like Columbus discovering America, the American Revolution, and the Civil War, as well as some limited ancient and world “key” events. Then in later grades, kids take a subject called “History” (I’m including classes with a modifier added, such as “World History” or “US History”) in which they learn pretty much all that same stuff.

So what is the difference between “Social Studies” and “History” or, if they’re essentially the same, why is one term used some of the time and the other term the rest of the time?

The second part of the question is… is there any standardized SS/History curriculum in the US? If so, at what level? Federal? State? Disrtrict? I realize that due to younger kids having a more limited ability to understand and retain the material that we can’t just start off first graders with the beginning of recorded history and then move on through Egypt and Greece and Rome and the Middle Ages and end up with the Vietnam War and more recent events by the time they graduate high school. Such a system would obviously create a generation of kids with very little understanding of all but the most recent history. So I accept that there is repetition in what is taught, and that older kids are taught some of the things they’ve already learned, only in more detail…

…that said, was anyone else’s experience like mine (I’m talking about through high school, not into college) where you learned a minimum of World History and then re-learned over and over the American Revolution, Paul Revere, et. al., and the Civil War, and touched on early 20th century events like WWI and WWII but never learned much if anything more recent?

It wasn’t until I took a world history class in college that I learned what the Korean War and Vietnam were even about. We never made it that far before in school (though I noted that the textbooks we didn’t get through did cover that stuff in later chapters that we never read).

It seems like every other year of my childhood I was studying the same material over and over in Social Studies/History, and huge holes were left uncovered, such as most post-middle ages European history, virtually all Asian and Middle Eastern history, Africa was ignored entirely except was was relevant to studying the slave trade in America, South America was mentioned briefly with Cortés invading Mexico, but that was a subject probably covered in no more than a day or two of classtime.

So is there a standard curriculum in existence, even if just by tradition, that, for example, first graders learn about X historical events and fifth graders learn about Y historical events, etc? Or is it up to the school/the teacher? The school district? the state? The feds? Was your experience the same as mine or is my confusion confusing because I was an odd case?

2

I don’t think there is a standard curriculum. I grew up in Minnesota, where we got a semester of Minnesota Studies, in ninth grade, followed by three semesters of American History, and two of World History.

But I moved to New York for my Junior year, where I don’t know if they had New York history at some point, but ninth and tenth grade were World History and eleventh was American History.

So I ended up studying World History with the tenth graders, rather than repeat American History.

3

Around here, History is part of the Social Studies department, which also includes Economics, Psychology and such stuff.

In the US, curriculum is standardized at the state level. California’s, for example.

4

I believe “social studies” is a general term that covers a wide range of social sciences: history, geography, economics, political science, anthropology, sociology, psychology, etc. In elementary school, you get very introductory material from several of these areas. My 4th grader’s social studies class recently did a unit on Africa. The material they covered contained some of what I’d call history, some geography, some anthropology, and some political science.

By high school, the social sciences will be more specialized, and you’ll get classes that are specifically about a certain type of history. Obviously, there is a lot of overlap between the various social sciences, so you can’t learn history without learning a little from the other areas, but the focus in HS should be more specific. To get a sense for what other social science courses are offered in US high schools, you might look at the list of AP exams. I see economics, poli sci, and psych on there, in addition to a variety of flavors of history.

5

History is a subset of “Social Studies.” If you call it “history,” you’re studying what happened in the past. By calling it “Social Studies,” you can also study present-day societies—their geography, political systems, cultural practices, etc.

6

When my kids were in school, “Social Studies” encompassed geography (as in, “the world and its people” type geography), history and government/civics.

I don’t know how it is in other states, but in Missouri, there are requirements for courses in state and federal government during elementary and high school, so they wouldn’t fit in to a national curriculum.

7

Where I’ve lived in the U.S., you do indeed cover the same subject matter multiple times. What changes is the amount of specificity.

That first social studies class, for example, may teach that Columbus discovered America and Lewis & Clark were the first whites to take an expedition all the way across the country from Atlantic to Pacific.

The next time the subject is taught, they may learn about the background of Columbus’ trip, and about all of the others that came before (Leif Erickson, for example). They’ll actually get some detail on Lewis & Clark’s trip, and find out that the <i>actual</i> first crossing of North America was done by Sir Alexander Mackenzie in 1793. And then they’ll find that it had been done numerous times in what is now Mexico well before that.

The next time it’s covered, it probably won’t just be the historic facts, but the socio-economic effects of the historical events and the implications to modern society.

8

Growing up in the 80s, Social Studies and History were different classes.
Social studies would cover things like the parts of the US government, current events (usually political) and how laws are created.
History was what had happened in the past, at local, country or world level, depending on what year.

9

I’m curious… did any of you, say, about my age or older (born in the early '70s) get as far as Vietnam in your history classes at any point (pre-college)? (I specify my age or older because my parents were Vietnam-eligible ages… I think you get much older than me and Vietnam wouldn’t have been in the history books yet.)

I remember we touched on it for like… half a class once and that was it. We never really learned what the disputes were or why we entered the war or anything about it. I’ve always felt that I am undereducated when it comes to Vietnam. I could research it on my own but I’ve never been motivated to do so.

10

Those of us of that age, the Viet Nam war protesting generation, never quite understood what the dispute was either, except vaguely that North Viet Nam was Communist and for some reason we had to fight Communists wherever we found them, even though there were lots of other bigger Communist regimes around the world that we weren’t fighting. Go figure. ETA: Something about dominoes.

As for some other posts above: If the rather un-coordinated SS/Hist grade school curriculum had kids learning some of the same things over and over, it could also have us completely missing some things. I, for example, never heard a single word about Lewis & Clark in grade school, junior high, or high school. Not one word.

11

I was schooled in the 90s and only once did we even make it to WWII. We usually ran out of time around the 1920s-1930s.

12

That’s just lazy/sloppy teaching. A good teacher will pace things so you get both depth and coverage during the school year. I am proud to note that by the time the AP tests roll around in May, my kids are up to 2005 in their study of European History. I will admit that Napoleon gets more face-time than Helmut Kohl does. :smiley:

13

I was born in 1961 and graduated in 1979. So the Vietnam War was still mostly current affairs when I was in school. As I recall, history generally ended with WWII and then social studies picked up events like the Cold War, civil rights, the space program, decolonization, Watergate, and the Vietnam War.

14

So “Social Studies” = “Social Sciences for Kids” ?

15

Yes, and I think part of it was not seen as important because stuff that happened in the last 50 years is more in the public consciousness than what happened in the 1800s. Want to know about the 50’s? Go ask your parents or grandparents.

We never covered the Vietnam war or Watergate, but I know 10 times more about those than I do about the war of 1812 which we did cover.

16

Did you learn this from watching the news? Talking with family? Reading magazines/newspapers? I’m curious because I don’t know much about Vietnam or Watergate even today at age 39. We didn’t really cover it in school, and I didn’t pick it up anywhere else, either. I mean I knew vague things about both, but all anecdotal stuff and nothing very comprehensive at all. I’m just wondering what you did that got you so much better informed than I was. I’m jealous :wink:

17

I graduated long beforeHermitian, but when I was in school, our textbooks stopped at World War II. We didn’t run out of time, we ran out of material!

18

I was born in 1960 and to the best of my recollection our American history classes pretty much ended with WW2. Social Studies were more focused on present cultures on other continents, and World History courses seemed to concentrate on two areas…Early civilization in Mesopotamia and Rennaissance Europe. Or maybe those are just the ones I remember most vividly. I also recall a strong emphasis on state/regional history, in my case Idaho and the Northwest. Such luminaries as Alexander McKenzie, Capt. Bonneville, Sacajawea, Marcus Whitman and Chief Joseph figured prominently.

There must have been quite a bit of latitude left to the individual instructors. For example, I recall a middle-school history teacher who had done his dissertation on the first world war, and spent a great deal of time on that particular period, which seems to recieve scant attention in most U.S. history courses. His teaching must have resonated with me, because to this day I seem to be better-informed on that particular conflict than most people I meet.
SS

19

Hey, I said I knew 10 times more about these than I know about the war of 1812. I know next to nothing about the War of 1812!

I don’t know, I watch passing programs on the history channel. I read an odd Wikipedia item or two. Listen to NPR. Reading the dope, talking with people. Just being intellectually curious should allow you to soak up a lot of what has happened in the last 50 years or so. YMMV

20

There are no national standards for anything education-related in the US, strictly speaking; it’s entirely up to the states. Right now, there is something called the “Common Core State Standards Initiative” at the national level, in which standards are being hammered out and offered to states to adopt (they get incentives if they do). Texas and Alaska said ahead of time they wouldn’t participate. Virginia said it would but then decided not to adopt the CCSS after all. Minnesota and Nebraska are sort of on the fence. All the other states have more or less adopted.

However, the CCSS is designed for literacy and math skills rather than facts, generally, and so won’t apply to history curricula.

I’m just a few years older than you are, OpalCat, and my experience was similar to yours. Teachers were given textbooks, usually at the district level, and what they did with them was up to them. The books generally stopped several decades short of life, and some teachers didn’t manage to get all the way through even that. Vietnam in particular seemed to be avoided, in my observation because teachers knew it was a still-divisive subject, as almost all of our parents had been directly affected. I had one class in high school with a great pair of teachers who really got into discussing the war at the end of the year of US History, and it was a Big Big Deal to go home and ask our parents about what it had been like. The war had only been over for ten or eleven years at that time.

But that’s starting to change, that business of what history is actually covered being so eclectic. There is a fiercely strong movement in education in general towards ACCOUNTABILITY and lots of tests and so forth, as you’ve probably noticed, and many states now have strict lists of what historical facts and theories students must know to be allowed to graduate. There are usually separate categories for World, US, State, and Local, with local being defined locally as city, county, area, or whatever works for them.

It is still true that most districts or states have different categories of history assigned to different years – I think US History is standard for 11th grade, for instance. World History is often divided into Ancient Civilizations, which goes up through the Roman Empire; Fall of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance or the Restoration or so; and Modern.

As to the first part of your question, just to affirm what everyone else said, yes, Social Studies is to History as Science is to Chemistry. Younger kids cover broader material in less depth, and older kids may cover some of the same things in more detail in more clearly-defined subjects.