Chapter 10: Implementation at School and Classroom Levels

The last two chapters of this book are both concerned with implementation. Chapter 10 focuses on (1) a curriculum plan at the school level as well as (2) creating plans by a social studies department or by a single teacher or by several teachers for their classrooms. The suggestions made here are under the control of schools, administrators and teachers. Chapter 11 deals with broader conditions needed to support this curriculum more comprehensively—academic freedom policies, democratic school and classroom climate and teacher education programs that would make implementation of this curriculum stronger if they were in place.

In the original version of this book, Engle and I debated the efficacy of alternative approaches for the implementing an overall plan for this curriculum. We were tempted to reject entirely the conventional memory-lecture-recite curriculum with its heavy dependence on textbooks and encourage schools to start from scratch with selected content tailored to focus on important controversial issues. We rejected this idea for a number of reasons. First, each of the disciplines upon which social studies relies is a field of inquiry separate and different from that of other disciplines. Moreover, since each has its own set of questions to ask and its own way of conceptualizing and looking at data. Disciplines are somewhat resistant to amalgamation. In studying significant social conditions and controversial issues that fall primarily in the area of one discipline, more understanding results from the simple process of comparing findings in one discipline with findings in another field. The interdependency of geographers and historians is a case in point. The frequent clash of views evident by writers of fiction and biography as well as those of historians and economists are others. In working with complex issues it is very important to understand why it is that people, even different scholars, hold different views of events and ideas and how and why these views vary. Secondly, our views were chastened by the experience of the “New Social Studies” which was so promising when examined on paper, but was summarily rejected by teachers despite the great promise those innovative curricula held for transforming social studies from a meandering, thoughtless memory process to one that was engaging and thought-provoking. Teachers rejected those curricula despite the gargantuan resources, both human and monetary, invested in their development. Many teachers found it too drastic a break with their customary behavior. They could not find themselves nor could they find the subjects they were used to teaching in the “New Social Studies.” The new programs required them to change what they taught and how they taught it. Importantly, teachers who had always taught in the expository mode were very uncomfortable with the open-ended questioning that the “New Social Studies” required. Furthermore, teachers had not been directly involved in the creation of the new materials and therefore did not feel any ownership in them. Many teachers felt they were set adrift in unfamiliar territory.¹