Teaching Social Science

...To my way of thinking, the ultimate objective in the teaching of social science, as in all teaching, is, or should be, the development of personality, of individualism, of liberty...

...If a man is a good citizen of his own community, he is apt to be a good member of his nation...

...Everybody should learn finally, that the eventual outcome of the current flux in politics, economics and thought is dependent in part upon changing material circumstances and in even larger part upon intelligent direction and control by human beings...

...Indoctrination"—that is the word, and I mean it...

...Yet I cannot see how we can judge of the efficacy of anything we do unless we act with some purpose, that is, unless we adhere to some philosophy...

...We Americans are not certain that we are a distinctive nationality...

...We need, therefore, to overcome prejudice...

...if he has more than a dash of personal ambition, he will aid and abet...

...It is not meant that social science is the only knowledge which should be imparted to school children...

...Really to understand the present and to prepare intelligently for the future, it is vitally necessary to have some knowledge and appreciation of the past...

...At almost every point, therefore, social science must include history...

...Or, if it is true that men are predestined by something outside of themselves—call it nature or call it God— to behave in a particular way, to undergo improvement perhaps at one time and deterioration at another time, then social study may be directed toward the discovery of the secrets of God (or, if you will, nature) but it can scarcely be expected to alter the consequences of those secrets...

...It is preeminently for social-science instruction to redress the balance between material and aesthetic values...

...Yet I clearly imply just such a hypothesis when I assert that human beings are capable of self-improvement...

...Such assurance, the teaching of social science should seek to give...

...The teaching of social science should involve not only the imparting of knowledge but also a certain amount of indoctrination...

...The only things about which I am clear and ready to express a conviction are first, that all future curricula must be based ultimately upon the philosophy which has already been expounded, and secondly, that they must take large account of certain corollaries which are derivable from that philosophy and which I shall now endeavor briefly to set forth...

...The only seem to act primarily because of habit, of vested interests, of external pressure, or of passing fads and thing which many of us have utterly failed to do is to fancies...

...The teacher of history, because he has been reason about the experimenting and the tinkering, to trained to teach it and gets paid for teaching it, tends to teach it as his old professor in college or normal school would have him teach it, modified, of course, as to content and method, by what legislators and local school authorities impose upon him...

...If we will agree enthusiastically on the philosophy that human beings are capable of self-improvement and that social science is fundamental for all educated human beings, we shall be in a position to exert increasing influence on the nation, and if the nation accepts our philosophy, we can move forward with confidence June 25, 1930 THE COMMONWEAL 209 and reason to refashion curricula and courses of study...

...it is, frankly, a hypothesis...

...English literature and great foreign literature should be treated more and more as proper material for that social science which shall be at once sound and fine...

...Certain tools, of course, are necessary for advancement in social knowledge...

...It will take time, but the first responsibility is with the teachers and administrators of our schools...

...We need domestic peace...

...No part of the subject-matter of education is more influential than the study of social problems and rights...

...There must obviously be instruction in the national language, in reading and writing, and also in figuring and drawing, and instruction, at least in the upper reaches, in foreign languages...

...They may decide, in their wisdom, or in their despair, to have the non-civic and non-economic history ask ourselves the why and the wherefore, to seek some large measure of agreement in the public mind as to the fundamental objectives of all the current projects and measurements, syllabi and curricula...

...These constitute so many special objectives in the teaching of the social sciences...

...In America, too, we tend to rate very highly the immediately useful, no matter how ugly it may be, and to regard the beautiful—aesthetics in general—as an unnecessary and freakish frill which concerns only a few women's clubs and a few denizens of our Greenwich Villages...

...The phrase "social sciences," particularly the word "science," has recently been acquiring an almost mystical significance...

...Economics should concern itself with the appearance, as well as with the functioning, of fields, factories and workshops...

...Patriotism must be purified and humbled...

...We cannot realize what a changing world we live in today unless we compare and contrast it with the worlds in which our grandfathers and our much more distant forebears lived...

...capitalists about working-men...

...In this modern age of flux, our people should be taught that any minority of today may be a majority of tomorrow, that what is cause for the goose is cause for the gander...

...If the local school authorities, pressed by the chamber of commerce or banking members of the board of education, ordain that, in a world so menaced as ours is by the spectre of Communism, sound principles of economics and capitalism shall be inculcated in special classes, the teacher of history is likely to assent, however perfunctorily, and to become at eleven o'clock a teacher of economics...

...This highly important social knowledge must be communicated to the masses through the medium of school instruction in the social sciences, and it must be communicated with certain specific examples and applications...

...We need, therefore, to have mutual understanding...

...This end is social knowledge—social science—which can and must be served not only by special instruction in it, not only by closely articulated instruction in art and nature, but also by relevant instruction in all the tools I have mentioned...

...and what eventually will come out of it no one knows...

...Everybody should learn, also, that man's intellectual relationships are not static or uniform, that old ideas pass away and new ones are born, that the world is full of isms of all kinds, that there are a multitude of conflicting religious and divergent ethical codes...

...We have "measured" and been "measured...

...We cannot love humbly our community, our nation or foreign peoples unless we know something of their history, their old faults as well as their old virtues...

...On the other hand, he proposes as an assumption sure to aid us all, the hypothesis that "human beings are capable of selfimprovement...

...You recall that the philosophy, as I stated it, contained two propositions...

...studies" in seeking for them greater prestige and more hours of instruction...

...It is far better, in my opinion, to give students one thing thoroughly than to give them many things sketchily...

...Many of us think, moreover, that knowledge of art, of ethics and of religion is of very great importance to educated human beings...

...Human relationships in America would be improved if we should set out with a will to teach true politeness and a real regard for the personal dignity of our neighbor...

...In this sense, then, social science should be the chief concern and the ultimate core of all school instruction...

...I detest coercion by Fascists, by Bolshevists, by military or electoral majorities...

...it is not susceptible of mathematical demonstration...

...So, to rid "science" of its mysticism, let us substitute for it the plain word "knowledge" or the equally plain word "understanding...

...For a goodly number of years we have tinkered, or, as the more naive among us express it, we have "experimented," with the teaching of the social sciences, collectively and individually, at every level in public and private education...

...If we cannot agree on it, we may as well cease to talk about educational reform and either abandon our profession or continue in it as cynics or hypocrites...

...The philosophy which I suggest contains two propositions : (1) that social science is fundamental for all educated human beings...

...Then, as the state-imposed civics and the locally imposed economics become entrenched and create new vested interests, the superintendents and other bigwig educators hold many a conference as to how they may relieve the distressed and distressing curriculum...

...We are certainly in a fearful mess today in our schools...

...We talk about social science or social knowledge as if "social" were the all-important word in the phrase...

...We must have some standard of value...

...And I assert that this is fundamental for all educated human beings...

...We are certainly in a pot which at present is more obviously boiling than melting...

...If the state authorities direct that civics shall be taught apart from history in special courses so many hours a week for so many years, the teacher of history conforms and may become a teacher of civics at nine o'clock and of non-civic history at ten o'clock...

...What of social science is taught should be taught thoroughly, at least as thoroughly as determined teachers can devise...

...This is an integral part of the philosophy which I would have you accept not only with the lips but with the mind and heart...

...And it should be a special function of socialscience instruction in our schools to make clear that a man who has the welfare of his country and community intelligently at heart must be informed about other nations of the world and prepared to extend the same amity and justice to foreigners as he assures to his folks at home...

...The purposeful teaching of social science in our schools can undoubtedly influence the character of the product...

...We must take account of the impressive fact that the world of today is vastly different from the ancient or mediaeval world, that a new material and industrial civilization is emerging with the swift contemporary progress of the mechanical arts, that we live in an age when human relationships are assuming an unprecedented complexity...

...Home is home, and normally, even in our rapidly changing world, it is the locality of one's birth or residence...

...We do not want in America of the future a dead level of mediocrity...

...We seem to think that if children are "socialized"—if they conform to current conventions of the majority—it is final proof that they have learned the lesson of social science...

...We must set some ideal goal...

...We want leaders more than followers, and leaders who have character and ability...

...Another objective of social-science teaching, another matter of "indoctrination" if you like, should be the development in our people of a greater appreciation of beauty and grace and politeness...

...I confess to being what in many quarters today is deemed old-fashioned...

...I myself am no specialist on curricula or courses of study, and I am utterly lacking in prophetic inspiration...

...We have spawned syllabi and curricula...

...But the price we must pay for it is the assurance of mutual understanding, amity and justice between the many groups that comprise America...

...It should doubtless, like charity, begin at home, but home is not necessary an artificially constructed national state nor is it any place on the earth's surface where some fellow-national flies a flag or owns an oil well...

...The first—"That social science is fundamental for all educated human beings"— is not likely, if properly understood, to arouse among reflective persons any serious dissent...

...If it is true that men are perpetually doomed by fate or animal mind to a constant round of the same toil and trouble, then social study may at best provide a slight mental divertissement, though its chief utility will consist in teaching the young to expect the worst...

...In any event, the teacher equally conventional "natural sciences" and "humanistic of history is apt to acquiesce...

...But while eschewing philosophies of history in gen208 THE COMMONWEAL June 25, 1930 eral, I make bold to insist that we teachers of the social sciences must accept a particular and partial philosophy, by light of which we construct our courses and curricula and in terms of which we measure our achievements, and that we must strive to convert to this philosophy not only school administrators but the mass of our fellow-countrymen...

...This may sound platitudinous, but it really needs a little elucidation...

...The result is not only that we teach children a very little about a good many things, but also that we tend to establish too much uniformity at a rather low level of mentality and information...

...Certainly, America as a whole needs to learn the lesson of thoroughness...

...Both "socialized" and individualistic modes of thinking are persistent elements in human experience, and one of our most pressing problems is that of adjustment to a world in which neither can be left out of account...

...I do mean, however, that the public should expect, and every teacher should strive, to have the rising generation indoctrinated during their school course with the general philosophy which I have set forth earlier in this paper, and likewise with the ideas that they live in a changing world and that they labor in a country in which mutual understanding among groups is required...

...the North about the South...

...We do not want a whole nation of "socialized" followers, without leaders in a wide variety of human endeavor...

...Everybody should learn that man's political relationships are not immutably fixed, that reformation of government is necessary and possible, that the constitution of the United States is susceptible of amendment, that even the national state is not necessarily a final or supreme form of political organization...

...To these questions many persons have given more or less reasoned answers, and presently I myself shall attempt to do likewise...

...I beg to differ with this estimate of the purpose of social science...

...And it does seem to me that one great purpose of the teaching of social science in American schools should be minimizing of friction between the various elements in our national pot...

...Civics should inculcate a critical attitude toward town-planning and national architecture as well as toward community chests and national taxation...

...None of us would question, I assume, that knowledge or understanding of the universe of nature and matter, so-called "natural science," should occupy an important place in educational curricula...

...Or, if it is true that men are petty chemical compounds, without spirit or will, in an endlessly evolving universe, it hardly matters what the compounds are taught in their nascent state...

...It is, let me repeat, a hypothesis...

...No man knows absolutely the truth of any alternative hypothesis...

...Professor Hayes strikes a balance between pessimism and optimism...

...We cannot appreciate the difficulty of indoctrinating the coming generation with reasoned toleration unless we know the painful past record of toleration...

...Social science" thus becomes a phrase signifying knowledge or understanding of human society and of the place of the individual in human society, that is, knowledge or understanding of the human race and of human relationships...

...The United States is a segment of the world and comes nearer perhaps than most other countries to presenting a complete cross-section of contemporary human relationships about which it is our business to impart knowledge and understanding...

...The second proposition—"That human beings are capable of selfimprovement"—is more questionable...

...our religious groups about one another...

...I would have you moved and stimulated by it...

...Our majorities should be more enlightened about our minorities...

...Secondly, our basic philosophy must be applied especially to the training of American children...

...But tools are not an end in themselves...

...We cannot measure the significance to groups in our midst of their convictions and customs unless we know something of how such convictions and customs originated and developed...

...I am a liberal...

...They will simply have to evolve, and the universe about them will simply have to evolve, precisely as the laws of celestial mechanics dictate...

...In other words, we have been so intent upon details history...

...He feels that "we are certainly in a fearful mess today in our schools...

...In the first place, our philosophy requires us to teach the dynamic, rather than the static, character of human relationships...

...One reason why we are not thorough is because we are dealing with mass education and are trying to give all children everything which any of them should or might be given...

...It should also be a purpose of social-science instruction to prepare the coming generation for greater appreciation of, and better citizenship in, not only the nation but also a particular locality or district, and the world at large...

...Why confound an already confused curriculum with more and more of them...

...I find that many ideas when expressed in English words of Latin derivation tend, like ships, to collect on their hulls a mass of foreign barnacles and that they can be easily scraped clear of their accretions by the simple device of reexpressing them in words of Anglo-Saxon derivation...

...Let me warn you that there is nothing mystical in my use of the word or phrase...

...Everybody should learn, moreover, that man's economic relationships are not irrevocably determined, that the blessing of private property should not be restricted to the few but should be extended to the many, that a more rigorous control or a more equitable distribution of wealth is desirable and practicable, that all political questions are economic and all economic questions are political...

...our urban communities about their rural neighbors...

...No man knows positively if any of these hypotheses is true...

...In other word, we have been so intent upon details of method and so anxious to experiment with every novelty that we have followed fads and neglected philosophies...

...That we have hundreds of different kinds of Americans should be a source of real pride, instead of shame, among us...

...But why teach the social sciences at all...

...the East about the West...

...I believe sincerely and wholeheartedly in according to everyone the greatest amount of liberty compatible with the liberty of others...

...Latterly, special courses have been added to the curriculum on economics and on a miscellany of social information which is sometimes labeled sociology...

...they are means to another end...

...To this end, the teaching of social science must be directed...

...This applies alike to racial, religious, economic and sectional groups of our population...

...The evidence for these assertions and the conclusion deduced, seem of vital interest.—The Editors...

...I am a sceptic about history as a clear record of God's wondrous ways with man...

...They For in any case, his not to reason why, his but to do and— live I We seemingly end here without rhyme as well as without reason...

...To me, in my weakness, it appears self-evident...

...I would have my countrymen return to the teaching of Thomas Jefferson in this respect and to the practice of the real toleration which should proceed from that teaching...

...It is the only excuse I know for teaching anything, or for maintaining any school, or for paying any teacher...

...History should be of art quite as much as of political instructions and material inventions...

...The teacher of history, like any teacher who would keep his job, is a submissive soul with just a dash of personal ambition...

...2) that human beings are capable of self-improvement...

...Without violating the traditional "neutrality" of our schools in the matter of specific religions and in that of particular codes of morality, religion and ethics in general—and likewise art and nature—in so far as they have conditioned and complicated human relationships and are still doing so, must be closely articulated with social science...

...Far be it from me to tell you what particular courses should or will be put into the school curriculum at any given point...

...Law" in history disturbs and disconcerts me...

...For social science involves an understanding not only of society but of the place of the individual in society, and its exponents should labor to develop and train the individual, and particularly the exceptional individual...

...It is part of my philosophy that men, within relatively narrow and vague limits, can and do exercise some real freedom of will, that they can and do learn from their own experience and from the experience of others, and that they can and do exert an appreciable influence on the course of human events, aye, even though infinitesimally, on the universe of matter...

...But how few persons get excited about the mere certainty that two and two make four I At any rate, the hypothesis before us is practical and workable...

...I am even a sceptic about any absolute law of cause and effect in human history, or at any rate about our ability to comprehend fully how such a "law" operates in particular cases...

...given in smaller doses, say at ten o'clock and on alternate days or to have the history instruction of twelve grades telescoped into a oneyear survey of all the past of the entire human race, or perhaps, to scrap the separate courses of special social study in favor of an omnibus course based on the these subjects are styled "social sciences" or "social children's reading of the morning newspaper or, prefstudies," and their exponents vie with the exponents of erably, the Literary Digest...

...Unfortunately, however, most teachers and most principals and superintendents and the public at large expend little thought on the fundamental why, or, if they do, their actions betray rather crazy results of their ratiocination...

...We have at the present time in our schools too many hasty survey courses, we teach too many little bits of this and that, we convey too many vague and fleeting impressions, so that while we may open some students' minds, we leave most of them pretty empty...

...The fundamental indoctrination, in a word, should be that of toleration, not the toleration of indifference but the toleration of reason, a genuine respect for the opinions of others without any obligation to share them...

...I do not mean that any teacher should be encouraged or even free to indoctrinate his students with every idea of economics, politics and religion which he himself entertains...

...I am no advocate of any simple explanation as to why man exists or as to how he has behaved...

...As a historian, I always shudder when sociologists or a certain type of literary gentleman place preconceived interpretations upon disputable occurrences of the past and call them "philosophies of history...

...Conventionally all By CARLTON J. H. HAYES Written originally as an address delivered to teachers of the social sciences, the following paper seems to us of general civic importance...

...our white people about their black compatriots ; our people of English antecedents about their fellow-citizens of continental European stock...

...We have extolled "projects...