Chapter 18: Practicing What We Teach

Engaging the critics of social studies education and public education in general is imperative. It may take the form of friendly dialogue over issues where both parties are willing to listen actively and reach agreement through consensus. More often though critics have an agenda they intend to implement and only see educators as road blocks in their paths. That attitude has been the norm, unfortunately, for too long.

If time is taken to examine it, the record is fairly clear that it has been appealing and often advantageous, at least in the short run, to attack education and especially social studies education, for partisan political gain. Unfortunately, media complicity in these efforts has too often been the standard, not the exception. On the other hand, the education community has often been a passive bystander, some would even say, a willing victim, more eager to complain about its victimhood than to stand, respond, and go on the offensive against those who would distort, dismiss, and oversimplify complex education issues.