28: An Issues-centered Curriculum for High School Social Studies

Adolescents today face real, difficult challenges: teenage pregnancy, drug use, violent communities, racial stereotypes and prejudices, broken homes. Many face the bleak economic realities of escalating college costs, or low-paying jobs for the non-college bound. Their families face the problems of unemployment or declining or stagnant real income. As students walk the streets of our nation’s cities they are confronted with homelessness, declining social services, and environmental blight. They will soon face pressing problems of securing health care, finding a job that will allow growth and success, and making decisions about their lives as individuals and as part of a larger community. Unfortunately, the typical social studies curriculum fails to explicitly address these issues, fails to help prepare students for the very real issues and problems they will face in their lives.