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Thomas Jesse Jones takes a position at the Hampton Institute
Jones shapes the curriculum for social studies around his beliefs about what would best suit the needs of the colored student body. This shows the role that race played in early curriculum development. “According to Jones, the social studies curriculum at Hampton sought to address the ‘actual needs’ of the students… Each of the Hampton social studies served to demonstrate to the students the qualities necessary for their race to advance” (Lybarger, 1983, p. 457). -
The National Education Association institutes a Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education along with subcommittees including what would go on to become the Committee on the Social Studies.
The new field of social studies, consisting of a four course sequence, was created to give students the skills needed for real life after graduating and represented a shift away from the traditional course structure. “The purpose of the new field of social studies was clearly utilitarian. Social studies education was to prepare students for the real life of the industrial order and the expanding democracy championed by Progressive reformers” (Johnson, 2000, p. 88). -
The founding of the National Council for the Social Studies is an attempt to create a solid framework for a field that was up for grabs at the time
One of its founders, Harold Rugg, emerges as a leader and advocate for progressive education in social studies and establishes early forms of textbooks to enhance student learning. Textbooks would play a crucial role in classroom instruction in multiple content areas for decades. “Rugg concluded that teacher education was too difficult and didn’t work. He decided to attempt to improve education through what he saw as the most influential element, the textbook” (Evans, 2004, p. 39). -
George S. Counts delivers his “Dare Progressive Education Be Progressive?” address at a meeting of the Progressive Education Association
His challenge was for schools to play a larger role in social issues and institutions to transform society as a whole, stressing the importance of creating students who will go on to play a larger role in society as a whole. “Counts’s vision held special implications for social studies education, supporting issues-centered study in the vein of Harold Rugg’s work” (Evans, 2004, p. 51). -
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The NCSS Committee on Wartime Policy distributes The Social Studies Mobilize for Victory, which suggests new changes to social studies curriculum to prepare students as citizens of democracy to aid the war effort
This change puts a new context into what students are learning, using the outside factor of global war to shape curriculum and instruction. “The general thrust of the commission’s recommendations was toward an efficient citizen education program that would assist in the war effort. Social criticism and social problems were generally deemphasized in favor of efficiency-oriented citizenship education with emphasis on strengthening the peoples’ faith in democracy” (Evans, 2004, p. 72). -
As World War II comes to a close, countries around the world, excluding those in Eastern Europe, begin following an instructional format similar to the U.S. with the creation of a new content area: social studies
This new subject replaces the previously taught traditional history and geography continuing the attempt to shift away from these traditional topics that began in the U.S. in the 1920s. “This change is also a response to the transformation of structural dominance among hegemonic powers since World War II in that social studies, virtually absent in Eastern European countries, illustrates the extensive influence of the United States in the rest of the world” (Wong, 1991, p. 44). -
John T. Flynn’s article in Reader’s Digest, along with support from other authors, pushes the Citizenship Education Project at Teachers College, Columbia University to begin integrating anti-communist propaganda into school curriculum
Like the role of World War II on classroom instruction, this again takes an outside factor like the Cold War, and puts it into an academic context to establish new learning materials. “After the establishment of propaganda within the school system and the math and sciences initiatives were put into action, American children were now mentally prepared for the possibility of war against Communism” (Gregg, 2016, p. 11-12). -
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The launch of Sputnik spurs U.S. education reform as critics point out weaknesses in math and sciences, content areas that would benefit the country’s standing in the Cold War. The National Defense Education Act (1958) address these demands
Events of the Cold War are being used to shape school curriculum, continuing the trend of political involvement in public schools. “The NDEA was supported by two main arguments: that national security required the ‘fullest development of the mental resources and technical skills’ of the American youth, and that the national interest required federal ‘assistance to education for programs which are important to our national defense’ ” (Evans, 2004, p. 116). -
An announcement is made in an issue of Social Education that details Project Social Studies
This initiative would give funding to multiple new projects that would together become known as “the new social studies.” This agenda represents new reforms for the field at a time when there was a need for progress and innovations in schools. “In retrospect the materials produced in the era of new social studies were among the most innovative and influential commodities ever produced for use in social studies classrooms” (Evans, 2004, p. 127). -
A Nation at Risk is published, generating widespread reform in U.S. schools. Programs like Goals 2000 and America 2000 ignore "social studies" and instead call back to topics favored by early conservatives
This again represents the role the government can play in America’s schools and the effects of these reforms are still being felt today. “The standards movement was launched amid a mythical national crisis in education based upon the charge that our schools were in dire condition and largely to blame for a U.S. decline in international economic competition” (Evans, 2004, p. 163).