Chapter 4: Climates of Constraint/ Restraint of Teachers and Teaching

In Culture Against Man, anthropologist Jules Henry (1963) argued that the purpose of public elementary and secondary schooling has been to transmit the national culture, not to transform it. Social studies in particular, he observed, teaches students to be stupid, that is, to accept the culture as given, not to question it. A half-century later, it could be argued that little has changed in this regard, even to the extent that the culture being transmitted is at least a decade or two behind the lived culture of teachers and students outside of school. For example, despite various reform efforts, the status of social studies education conveyed by Shaver, Davis, and Helburn (1979) more than 20 years ago appears to be out-of-date in relatively few schools and social studies classrooms across the nation. To understand the holding power of the kind of social studies education portrayed by Henry and by Shaver et al., I critically examine the research evidence regarding external influences, constraints, or controls on teachers and teaching, especially social studies teachers and teaching, and the internal restraints (e.g., self-censorship) felt by teachers with respect to their curriculum practice. Such an examination reveals social and structural obstacles to progressive curriculum and instructional reform, at least some of which presumably could be undermined.