3: The Historical Imperative for Issues-Centered Education

The historical imperative for organizing social studies around social issues is conceptual, or intellectual. The power of issues-centered education lies in the context of its social and intellectual traditions, providing the main conceptual fabric of this chapter:

Pervasive human issues remain at the center of the human condition and at the core of knowledge. The legitimate study of society, human knowledge, and competing views, therefore, requires a focus on issues. This imperative—historic and contemporary—should be the hallmark of social studies teaching.

Good teachers find that folfilfing this obligation is difficult but necessary. Charles Beard, the progressive historian and leading figure in social studies education in the 1920s and 1930s, addressed the idea of social studies and its complex expectations for teachers: