Chapter 8: Small Explosions: Igniting Controversy in the Secondary Social Studies Classroom

From artificial intelligence to arctic thawing, from immigrant rights to international espionage, social studies is, if nothing else, never neutral. Though the permanence of selected names, dates, and events undoubtedly provide a contextual underpinning to social studies, the very nature of the discipline is inherently fluid and rooted in deep, difficult, and contentious questions that beg for answers not easily found.

It is in this contentious, murky space that controversy resides. Controversy is not clean nor neatly packaged. It is opaque, unwieldy, and, if taught with fidelity, a bit uncomfortable. Controversy allows students to grapple with and ultimately challenge convention and conventional thought and, in doing so, produce and offer alternate understandings of how they approach and apply social studies in and for their own lives.