This election year, it's obvious we need social studies education more than ever | Opinion

Christie: President Obama is a petulant child Gov. Chris Christie criticizes President Obama's stance and actions on gun control. 01/14/15 (Source: Chris Christie)

By Jeff Passe and Shakealia Y. Finley

After years of national attention to reading and mathematics, the marginalization of social studies has come back to haunt us.

Family discussions of current events often devolve into heated debates fueled by misinformation. Citizens appear increasingly ignorant about history, geography, economics, civics, and culture, the basic elements of social studies. Civic discourse, a skill addressed in social studies classrooms, is breaking down.

Thoughtful analysis of complex societal problems, a cornerstone of social education, is less likely to be part of the public conversation. Is it any wonder that voter turnout has dropped in New Jersey for each of the last seven statewide elections?

The development of informed citizens is crucial in sustaining our democracy, but ironically, despite constant calls for engaged citizens, economic literacy, and global competitiveness, we have failed to prioritize the very subject area that addresses those goals.

Consider American reactions to the Paris attacks. Why did our country unite in support of France while ignoring terror incidents in Lebanon and Mali? Racism is a factor that explains empathy for white, European victims with little to none for those from the Middle East and Africa, but lack of knowledge may also play a part. We doubt many Americans know much about Lebanon or Mali -- location, history, or current events. It's not on the test. But everyone knows about France.

Let's turn to the arguments about refugee resettlement in the U.S. Gov. Chris Christie accused fellow Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump of not even caring what the immigration law says. But it may be that Trump, like many Americans, has never studied the topic, which is little more than a footnote in the curriculum.

Teachers need freedom to adjust the curriculum to emphasize such pertinent issues, but standardization discourages veering from official guidelines. We acknowledge that some social studies teachers may be part of the problem, content to rely on textbooks and unlikely to fight for curricular change. However, teachers can learn how to teach uncomfortable topics impartially, without worrying about public complaints, as long as professional development funds to develop those skills are not already invested in literacy and mathematics, areas that are tested.

Social studies, by definition, integrates a variety of topics. Refugee settlement has economic implications regarding labor, housing, and social services but students may not learn about them if the official curriculum focuses on history alone or if the economics is limited to graphs of supply and demand. Like many topics, migration is often addressed as if disconnected from the behavioral and cultural aspects of society, leaving students with a simplistic understanding of how issues interplay and manifest within our daily lives.

Because math and literacy scores are reported, social studies time may be restricted, resulting in an emphasis on textbooks and testing that forces teachers to present a single narrative of history. Students do not develop the ability to understand the world from multiple perspectives.

Certain groups, their worldviews, and their narratives are subsequently viewed as "others," mentally classified as "not one of us." Societal empathy suffers at the same time that disaffected individuals protest.

Depth has been sacrificed in the cause of meeting a required list of standards. One casualty is knowledge of our Constitution.

Because many citizens have never studied the relevant articles and amendments, our societal debates over privacy and guns have suffered. For example, many in New Jersey reacted to President Obama's recent executive orders as if he were the first president to ever use the device. The public does not know enough about these issues.

Instead of muttering about a decline in the levels of civic knowledge and skills, we need to recommit to social studies education. Instead of blaming those students who were victimized by misguided educational policies, we must admit that high-stakes testing in literacy and mathematics has handicapped the citizenry.

Well-meaning attempts to go "back to basics," or establish a "common core" (that gave minimal attention to social studies skills, and none to knowledge), or to testing and reporting only on literacy and mathematics achievement are the culprits. We now have a citizenry that fails to understand economic, social, and political implications of the choices they make for themselves and their own communities.

There is an urgency to address the marginalization of the social studies. Our nation is quite literally at risk.

Jeff Passe is Dean of the School of Education at The College of New Jersey; Shakealia Y. Finley is a doctoral student at the University of Missouri.

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