Teach history in elementary school -- not social studies

"Social studies" should mean history in elementary school, argues the Knowledge Matters Campaign. History provides the "context that makes civics, geography and economics meaningful," the campaign's new History Matters Review Tool argues. "History should be taught as a story," enabling students to "understand how events connect across time," the nonprofit argues. "Literacy and historical understanding should grow together."

Social studies is "a vast discipline" that doesn't get much time in elementary classrooms, writes Sarah Schwartz in Education Week. But teachers don't devote much time to the subject, and there's little consensus on subject matter.

Nationally, the main guide is the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework, which calls for teaching to emphasize skills such as "developing questions and communicating conclusions," she writes. "One of the few other social studies review tools publicly available, published by the curriculum company InquirEd, also emphasizes skills and inquiry."

The National Council for the Social Studies calls for teaching elementary students “to see the relevance and applicability of social studies topics in their daily lives.”

My daily life was not very interesting when I was in elementary school. I liked to read about people who had interesting lives in other places and times. I read 132 of the "little orange books," officially known as the Childhood of Famous Americans series.

Not surprisingly, the Knowledge Matters Campaign stresses building students' knowledge. In its literacy campaign, the group has advocated for curricula that "build students’ understanding of the world," citing evidence that readers’ background knowledge affects their reading comprehension.

The History Matters tool focuses on building "historical content knowledge," putting it in context and developing "students’ abilities to inquire and reason about history."

When I was in elementary school, social studies was a haphazard collection of teachers' favorite "units." I don't think we learned any history not related to Thanksgiving. Then, starting in fifth grade, we learned that Birmingham, Alabama is "the Pittsburgh of the South" and Birmingham, England is (or was in the early 1960's) "the Pittsburgh of England." By sixth grade, we were memorizing the "three principal products" of every country in Latin America, plus Mexico and every province of Canada. I guess that was supposed to be economics. It was boring.