The Great Plebeian College

Alaminos City, Pangasinan

College Department
Term: 1st Semester

FOUNDATION
OF

Instructor: Miss Jessa V. Gallardo

Email Account: gallardojessa4@gmail.com
Contact Number: (0930-005-0066)
Consultation time: M-F / 8:00AM-6:00PM

FOUNDATION OF SOCIAL STUDIES : MIDTERM MODULE 1

Dear Learner,

Greetings of Peace!
Welcome to the middle term of this semester!
This academic year is different among the previous school years you had enrolled
and finished. Amidst the crisis brought about by the COVID-19 Pandemic, The Great
Plebeian College continue to look for ways and alternatives for us to continue provide a
relevant learning assuring the deliverance of quality instruction to all Plebeian Learners.
The Education sector is highly affected but in spite of it, we, your teachers will continue to
strive in order for us to provide you an accessible, affordable and easy access modal of
learning for you to cope up with the trends of the 21 st century and so-called “New Normal”.
The transition stage of the new normal in education continues and shouldn’t be a
hindrance for you to achieve your dreams.
This learning module is especially designed for you since face-to-face learning is not
yet possible as of this time. Learning tasks, activities, reading texts, illustrations and
graphics are provided in this module for your thorough study at home. Every topic goes
with a task which is aligned with the course syllabus. You will accomplish every task within
a time frame. You will be notified with the schedule of retrieving your accomplished tasks.
We hope that this home-based learning will give you an opportunity to learn and
become productive. Indeed, this is a new experience for all of us which requires us to
adjust and adapt for the first few weeks or months. It may seem difficult that we will not
be able to interact but through your cooperation along with your parents or guardian’s
support and understanding, we will make it through.
Enjoy studying and God bless!

Table of Contents
FOUNDATION OF SOCIAL STUDIES : MIDTERM MODULE 2
II. Historical Background of Social Sciences
1. Growth of Social Studies in the United States

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2. Growth of Social Studies in Great Britain
3. Growth of Social Studies in the Philippines

III. Philosophical Background of Social Studies in the Philippines

1. Philosophical Background of Social Studies
2. Relationship between the Philosophical Background of Social Studies and the
Objectives of Education under:
• The American Colonial Period
• The New Philippine Republic

By the end of your interaction with this module, you should be able to:
1. Describe the origin of Social Studies in the United States of America.
2. Describe the origin of Social Studies in Britain.
3. Describe the origin of Social Studies in the Philippines.

1.0 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF SOCIAL STUDIES

INTRODUCTION
Social Studies as a discipline of study cannot be described as a casually conceived
subject that just happened by accident. Rather, it is part of an inheritance and a
tradition that requires citizens to function efficiently and effectively in a democratic
society. In this Unit you will have an opportunity to read about the development of
Social Studies both from global and national perspectives. This will involve a review of
the discipline’s historical development in different key nations, the circumstance leading
to its development in such nations and the interactive effects of such developments on
the growth of the discipline in other countries across continents.
Social Studies within the past hundred years can be said to have developed in different
parts of the world through relatively similar goal, but due to series of events which have
been peculiar to the different nations sharing the interest. Social Studies has come to
be seen in different countries as a tool for national development. Some of the countries
where the Social Studies thoughts have greatly developed and blossomed in the past
years include United States of America, Britain and Africa.

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1.0 Growth and Development of Social Studies Thoughts in the United States

The United States of America appeared to be the “mother” country of Social Studies,
and no wonder Obebe (1990), commented that Social Studies first appeared as a
curriculum of the educational system of United States of America (USA) within the first
two decades of the 20th century. He further remarked that although it was a stormy
and difficult birth, distinguished scholars like John Dewey, George Counts, Edger
Wesley, Harold Rugg and Earle Rugg, were the midwives. Thomas Jesse who was the
Chairman of National Education Association Committee on Social Studies which issued
its final report as part of a major review of the re-organization of secondary education
in (1917) has been identified as one of the first to use the term “Social Studies” in its
present sense.

Social Studies thought started developing in the United States of America in the early
1900 as a reaction to the tremendous numerous human problems prevailing at that
particular period. Some of these problems were basically social and political but purely
as a result of the civil wars which Americans went through and were just getting over.
Some of these problems were seen as cogs in the wheel of all efforts at ensuring the
evolution of a pluralistic and modernized democratic state.

By 1921, a national association called National Council for Social Studies (NCSS) whose
membership is opened to person or institution interested in Social Studies was formed.
This Council charged itself and its members with the responsibility of working towards a
better understanding of Social Studies and its importance in developing responsible
participation in social, political and economic lives.

The NCSS has since then been playing prominent roles in the development and wider
acceptance of Social Studies across the world. The organization has written several
position statements on the basic rationale for Social Studies education and curriculum
guidelines.

Through the effort of NCSS, various task forces were set up to review the scope,
content and sequences of Social Studies. This has really influenced the evolutionary
development of Social Studies in American Schools.

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Events in the world scene, such as the Russian launching of Sputnik (1957) and
American internal social problems of the 1960s gave birth to the “new Social Studies”
that began in the 1960s. During this period, curriculum materials of this new Social
Studies were designed to teach students both the concepts and methods of inquiry
used by historians and social scientists for generating knowledge. Many teaching aids
were developed and employed in the teaching of concepts and in the formulation of
generalizations to promote effective teaching of Social Studies.

By the seventh decade of the twenty century, the alarming rates of crimes, divorce and
illegal use of drugs on large scale heightened the interest of the Americans in Social
Studies. At this time they had started seeing Social Studies as a catalyst of social
change. Hence, the discipline started focusing on relevance to social problems and self-
realization. They now felt there was 24 an urgent need for the school to prepare
citizens to deal with some of the identified inevitable problems.

It is however, important to note that in the United States of America, there is no

national Social Studies syllabus for all schools. Each school district writes its own Social
Studies syllabus.

Social Studies in American scene as observed by Obebe (1990) does not have a static
structure. It has transformed from citizenship education for national development by
enlarging the vision and meaning of citizenship to include not only the local community,
the state and the nation, but also the global community. This is in recognition of the
fact that all human beings live in a multiboundary world; not simply a world of nation-
states, but one with a diversity of worldwide systems in which all people affect and are
affected by others across the globe.

The recognition of the dynamic nature of Social Studies in United States of America is
also being influenced by the fact that humanity is increasingly threatened by problems
that cannot be solved by actions taken only at the national level.

Social Studies in the United States of America today can therefore be said to be
focusing on the reduction of, pressures, social and environmental problems which are of
national and international concerns, with contents usually drawn from a variety of

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discipline-interdisciplinary approach. Students are being taught to think globally as they
act locally. Learners are taught in ways that make learning active, interactive, hands on
and engaging.

It must be noted that any society, which intends promoting democratic discipline
through Social Studies education, requires individuals who are willing and able to
participate effectively in the solution of common problems. They must also be willing at
times to take decisions which demand compromise among different points of view. This
is important for society to develop towards desired goals. This is the idea of Social
Studies in the United State of America. While it is true, that other subjects also
contribute towards the development of desirable goals in the youths, Social Studies is
viewed as bearing the greater responsibility. This is because Social Studies deals
directly with human problems and tries to shape the behaviours of individuals.

1.2 Growth and Development of Social Studies Thoughts in Britain

There is very little evidence of the existence of Social Studies before the 1930s in
Britain and other European countries. What could be regarded as the Social Studies
content at that time included materials from the Economics and Political Science, which
were then taught as Civics (Ogundare 2000).

This view is in line with what Lawton and Dufour (1914) as quoted by Obebe (1990)
observed through a remark that,

There is little evidence of the existence Social Studies in the curriculum at the beginning
of twentieth century, although history and geography (which were fairly established in
the elementary and grammar school by the1920s) would sometimes include materials
generally referred to as “civics”

The range was extremely restricted with much of the learning being by rote.

However, Social Studies thought itself was known to have had initial setbacks in the
history of British educational system. By 1926, there was a criticism of the content of
the school curriculum through the Hadow Report. The report pronounced that the
general character of teaching should take account of the pupils’ natural and social

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environments. This implies the desire for a curriculum that is socially relevant and
capable of equipping the young ones to go out and become adults in an industrialized
society. The report also noticed some elements of indoctrination in what was being
taught in schools, e.g, children were taught to “honour the queen” ‘run away from
every police man, etc.

This therefore marked the beginning of a more dynamic and affective thought in the
British Educational system, which Social Studies exponents later capitalized upon.

The advent of the Second World War which heralded some war problems that later had
adverse effects on the British citizenry also heightened the chances of this dynamic
thought. The World War II raised the concern for constructing a better society from the
26 sad experiences of the war. To resolve this post-war problem of adjustment being
faced by the citizens, more interest was shown in Social Studies. This was because the
content of the school curriculum was identified as capable of helping to construct a
better society out of the catastrophic one for the emerging Britons.

British educators therefore saw a liberal education as a way to bring about greater
understanding of human kind. The thought of Social Studies for inclusion in the school
curriculum became more prominent as it was recognized as capable or helping the
pupils and adults become socially conscious and responsible members of their society.
Hence, by 1944, the Social Studies curriculum emerged during the establishment of
secondary education for all, when the school leaving age was raised from 14 to 15years
and teachers had to be re-trained, as pointed by Lawton and Dufour 1974.

Between 1945 and the early 50s there was therefore a tremendous growth in the
thought of Social Studies and British Schemes were developed on integrated approach
to the subject. These growing thoughts were reflected in the series of teachers’
handbooks that were produced in Social Studies. For instance, by 1945, the movement
produced a document in which Social Studies was going to be taught as a common core
course for the younger ones.

The Social Studies programme that emerged during this period however faced a lot of
resentment from subject specialists like the historians and geographers, who saw
nothing special in the growing thoughts of subject. They felt unsecured because of

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continuous spread of the subject. This resentment did not allow the teaching of the
subject to further develop especially between the late 1950s and 1960. By the early
1960s there was a revival of interest in Social Studies as a result of the
recommendations of the Crowther Report of 1959 and the Newton Report of 1963. The
two demanded that school curricula should be relevant to industrialised and changing
society.

There therefore that thought which wanted Social Studies to focus on how to equip the
youth to become well-trained adults in an industrialised society. Since then Social
Studies 27 has received more attention in the British school curriculum. By 1968, an
important year for Social Studies, key books and curriculum projects on the subject
emerged.

The dynamic growth of the British society and advancement in technology have all
combined to improve the thoughts of Social Studies in Britain to the extent that the
focus of the discipline has shifted and subject is now seen as Modern Studies with its
contents including living in the community, living with others, urban life and learning.

From the foregoing one could say that the general objectives of British Social Studies
course may be seen as developing in children a more critical and balanced social
awareness. The new Social Studies in Britain emphasizes insights, concepts and
generalizations partially derived from the social science

1.3 Growth of Social Studies in the Philippines

This article constitutes preliminary thoughts on the development of the social sciences
in the Philippines. Drawing from previous assessments by Filipino social scientists of the
history and state of their disciplines,' it presents in broad strokes some of the trends
and turning points in the growth of anthropology, economics, political science,
psychology and sociology, five of the six core social science disciplines in the country.

The article begins with a sweeping historical account of the growth of the social
sciences in the Philippines up to their institutionalization in the 1960s, followed by a
summative description of developments from the 1970s to the 1990s. 4 Developments
are discussed in terms of influences on some of the substantive and methodological

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concerns of the disciplines. The paper concludes with the contributions of the social
sciences to public discourses, policy and practice.

It is important to note that watersheds in the development of the disciplines do not

correspond neatly to the historical periods set in the paper. Processes associated with
particular decades may have begun long before the period under consideration and
may have proceeded with significant turns in succeeding years. Mindful of this
observation, the periodization in the paper ought to be viewed as a convenient way of
contextualizing observed developments in the disciplines and the social sciences taken
collectively.
It is also important for the reader to treat this paper as an inchoate and unfinished
work, subject to continuing reformulation. Written on the basis of available documents,
views and insights of resource persons and the writer's observations from 1972 to
1999, the paper is circumscribed by the way developments in a few academic
institutions in Metro Manila' are reconstructed. It does not benefit from a
comprehensive review of the practice of the social science profession in other
institutions like the Asian Social Institute, the University of Asia and the Pacific, Silliman
University and Xavier University. Nor does the paper systematically consider
developments in the social sciences in other higher education institutions in the country,
government bodies and non-government organizations. Furthermore, the influences
and thrusts singled out in the paper do not adequately reflect the diverse theoretical
and methodological practices of individual social scientists even in the focal institutions
like the University of the Philippines where the trends are most palpable.

1. Instutionalizing the social sciences: from the American Colonial Period to the 1960s
The literature on the development of the social sciences in the Philippines explicitly
traces the genealogy of the disciplines, except psychology, to the works of pioneering
thinkers or the teaching of particular subjects during the Spanish colonial period. As
ethnographic accounts of settled communities at the time [Abaya, LucasFernan, and
Noval-Morales 1999:1], Abaya considered the Eurocentric writings of Spanish
chroniclers like Pigafetta, Loarca, Plasencia and Chirino in the 16' century as incipient
anthropological works. Agpalo argued that the systematic analysis of important aspects
of Philippine political theory by the intellectual leaders of the Philippine Revolution,
notably Jose Rizal and Marcelo H. Del Pilar, makes them the pioneers of political science

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[Agpalo, 1999:1991. Similarly, De Dios singled out Gregorio Sanciano y Joson, who
wrote a purely economic treatise toward the end of the 1 9th century while taking a
doctorate in civil laws from Madrid in 1881 [De Dios 1999: 85] as the first local
economist. Abad and Eviota, on the other hand, root the beginnings of sociology in the
teaching of social philosophy, social ethics and penology at the University of Santo
Tomas toward the end of the century.

Although early thinkers, forerunners of disiplinal works and particular courses may have
reflected the state of economic, political and sociological thought at the time,
anthropology, economics, political science and sociology as academic disciplines with
defined theoretical and methodological perspectives did not exist in the Philippines
before the 1900s. The academic circles in the 19' century were oblivious to the need to
document and understand the lives and identities of different cultural groups in the
country. They were not cognizant of discussions on the scope and appropriate analytical
tools for economics. For instance, neither the Methodenstreit debate between those
who espoused marginalist ideas and the historical school in Europe nor the Marxist
critique of laissez faire policies figured in local discourses [De Dios 1999:86-87] As for
sociology, the new orientation in social philosophy that passed off as sociological, hardly
challenged the transcendental moral relationships that underlay a traditional view of the
world [Pertierra 1997:5]. Nor did itadvarice the discipline's secular project of
systematically finding explanations for a variety of social phenomena in the real world.

The Philippine social sciences emerged as specializ&d disciplines with the establishment
of academic departments in the early American colonial period.' Patterned after
American universities, the social science departments in the country were created in
different years. Since ethnographic studies of Christian ethnic groups and nonChristian
tribes were already well entrenched in the colonial govermnent bureaucracy by the
second decade of the 1900s, anthropology was the first discipline to be instituted at the
University of the Philippines, the educational flagship of the new colonial order [Abaya
1999: 2]. The Departments of Sociology and Economics and of Political Science were
established a year after the Department of Anthropology in 1915 [Alfonso (ed) 1985:
61-62] while the Department of Psychology was instituted after eleven years.'

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The same year saw the establishment of a separate Department of Economics in the
College of Liberal Arts although it was taken out of the College three years later to form
the nucleus of the School of Business Administration [De Dios 1999:98-103]. Sociology
merged with anthropology to become the Department of Sociology and Anthropology in
the same period. Both departments split four decades later in 1963, two years before
the Department of Economics separated from the College of Business Administration
and became the School of Economics.
The return in the 1950s of a substantial core of Filipinos who pursued graduate studies
abroad stimulated the establishment of the School of Economics,the split of
anthropology and sociology into separate departments and the growth of political
science and psychology. While courses in the disciplines covered in this paper had been
taught in the first few decades before World War II, the social science curricula attained
prominence only in the postwar era [Hollsnteiner 1973:2]. Moreover, the gradual shift
in the p erspectives and content of the disciplines_.om legalistic studies Of government
as the principal organ of the state to studies of political systems institutions in political
science, 9 and from economic p descriptive and historical approaches to henomena to
the more analytical and quantitative economics that took Off in the 1960s [Gonzales
1997], from the view of ethnic cultures to the linguistic, demographic and communities
as other e within one's own culture in thnographic studies of ethnic groups Psychology
to P anthropology [Bennagen 1990:21, from counseling sychological testing and the

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dominance of Psychology [Enriquez 19 experimental methods in 85:49-1571 [Tan
1998:5 [Tones (forthcoming)] and from a social philosophical or normative sociology to
one based on empirical research occurred in the three decades following the war.

2. Heeding the call for relevance: the 1970s to the turn of the century

The social sciences in the Philippines were colonial implants. Unlike in the West where
the disciplines originated, they did not emerge as rational projects to make sense of
concrete societal experiences, e.g., the chaos and disorder wrought by the French and
Industrial Revolutions [Abad and Eviota 1981:131 . 132] Instead, they were shaped by
American social science although continental influences that have been integrated by
American social scientists into their thinking and practice filtered in. The country's
colonial experience, the American training of the first batch of returning social scientists
from graduate schools mostly in the United States and the presence of American
professors in some of the new academic departments and research institutions account
for the dominant hold of American academic traditions. The role of the University of
Chicago in shaping the thrusts and approach of Philippine anthropology, through the
training of Filipino anthropologists who filled strategic positions in teaching and
research, eloquently illustrates the impact of American academia on the social sciences.

The American character of Philippine social science notwithstanding, the first generation
of Filipino social scientists returning from their studies abroad in the 195 0s and 1960s
sought their relevance at the outset to what they perceived to be the needs of
Philippine society. Unmindful of the American bias of their training and firmly believing
that the social science disciplines they trained for can contribute to the country's
development the pioneers of the disciplines applied their skills to the analysis of
Philippine problems and rigorously trained the next generation to follow suit.
Economists, for instance, responded to the shift in goveriuiieiit'5 economic strategy
towards greater planning and intervention and the need of the business sector to
anticipate economic policy [De Dios 1999:98] through research that went beyond
economic history. By the 1960s, the predominant studies utilizing mathematical models
and empirical testing were effici ency-oriented and concerned with the allocation of
resources to various sectors [Mangahas 1982].

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Political scientists, psychologists, anthropologists and sociologists were as conscious of
making the social sciences useful to the country. Informed by modernization theories,
and departing from the emphasis of traditional political science on the state and its
organs, political scientists in the 1960s were preoccupied with understanding and
clarifying the country's political system and institutions [Machado 1981]. 4
Psychologists, the only social scientists with recognized professional practices, inevitably
grappled with the need to develop appropriate and relevant psychological tests
[Ennquez 1985:155]. Anthropologists, on the other hand, continued their ethnographic
research to further understand cultural and ethnolinguistic groups in the Philippines
while sociologists with anthropologists developed research expertise and generated
data on topics ranging from ethnic relations, social institutions, community studies and
Filipino values.

3. The search for alternative paradigms and methodologies in the 1970s and the 1980s

Prior to the late 1960s and 1970s, social science discourses in the country avoided
areas of intense ideological debate. The thematic foci of sociologists and political
scientists, for instance, eschewed agrarian unrest and the Huk rebellion. Not until the
turbulent years, from the end of the 1960s to the early 1980s did this obvious silence
receive scathing remarks from Marxist-inspired scholars. For instance, David assailed
the ideological character of sociology [David 1979:1 .9]. gy systematically focusing on
the social and cultural aspects of Philippine life without establishing their links to the
wider political economic structure, sociologists were criticized for masking the structural
roots of social ills and contradictions. Similarly, Nemenzo charged mainstream political
science as an intellectualized expression of bourgeois ideology. 11 Even the less
legalistic and more institutional approach of political writings in the 1960s was criticized
for leaving unexamined the foundations of a bourgeois social order.
Reflecting the worldwide disenchantment of younger scholars with traditional social
science perspectives, Marxism was one of two movements that influenced the Philippine
social science disciplines in the 1970s and the 1980s. The other movement advocated
for the indigenization of knowledge. It was less global, entailing networks of scholars
confined largely to postoolonial societies in the South. The two movements reflected
different intellectual projects that often contradicted each other but in practice drew
common adherents and sympathizers. The relationship between Marxism and the

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indigenization movement is akin to that between Marxism and the nationalist school,
which de Dios discusses cogently in this volume [De Dios 1999:941, i.e., close, but
complex and ambivalent

3.1 Marxism and the Philippine social sciences

The humanist notion of critique called for a negation of existing Structures and forms of
consciousness that prevent the full development of the human potential. Asserting an
epistemological break between the young Marx who espoused a humanist project and
the older Marx who developed a science of history, str ucturalist Marxists advocated a
notion of critique as unraveling the system of determina- tion that accounts for what
exists.

The influence of Marxism on political science may not have been as strong in other
parts of the country. Considering the lag and background of political science teachers in
the region (many are lawyers) Machado's observation that textbooks on Philippine
government and politics prior to 1972 remained basically descriptive, utilizing a
historical and legal approach, may have applied even in the post-1972 period (op cit. as
cited in Caoili [1984:701) 19 The public intellectuals included Francisco Nemenzo,
Randoif David, Alexander Magno and Temario Rivera. Note that the influence of
Marxism in sociology was less apparent in the publications of the period. Marxist articles
did not figure significantly in the issues of the Philippine Sociological Review.
Nevertheless, David's Marxist-inspired critique of sociology and advocacy of the
dependency model of development fomented discussions and drew a following among
younger sociologists. 20 It is important to note that while the public intellectuals from
among the University of the Philippines' Faculty of Political Science and Sociology were
quite influential in mainstreaming Marxism into their disciplines, Marxists did not
dominate either the Departments of Political Science or Sociology. Majority of the
faculty was non-Marxist.

4. From polarization to pluralism and convergence in the 1990s

Intense debates between contending schools of thought and methodological positions
preoccupied the social sciences in the 1970s and 1980s with the exception of
economics. Questions regarding basic goals and perspectives and the methodological
issues posed by Sikolohiyang Pilipino divided psychology. In political science, Marxism

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challenged the structural functionalist and systems approaches to political development
with which the modernization theories of Samuel Huntington, Lucien Pye and James
Coleman, among others, had affinity. Similarly, Marxist and phenomenological thinkers
contended with structural-functionalism and systems theory in sociology. While
anthropology in the Philippines was not divided into contending schools of thought, it
was nevertheless engaged in a collective redefinition of its directions against the taken-
for-granted colonial standpoint of the 'other' as object of study.

5. Concluding notes: social science disco urse/p ractice and public policy
The polarization of perspectives and methodologies in the late 1960s and 1970s and
their convergence in the succeeding decades have their parallels in social science
practice. The partisan discussions among social scientists on the issue of working with g
overnment during Martial Law was eventually replaced by an openness to critically
collaborate with policyrnakers after the restoration of formal institutions of
Constitutional democracy in 1986. At the height of authoritarian rule, social scientists
exchanged polemical barbs. Those who worked with the Marcos administration were
accused of legitimizing its dictatorial designs and the crony capitalism it fostered. On
the other hand, those critical of colleagues who worked societal problems. with
government were charged with hiding in their ivory tower, unmindful of pressing The
regime change in 1986 blurred the great divide. The democratic space created by the
change justified the involvement in policy research and advocacy of those who once
opposed interfacing with the Marcos g social scient overnment. Since many of the
critical ists of the 1970s worked closely with sectoral groups and non-governmen
organizations t (NGOs) in the movement against the Marcos regime, they pushed for
the participation of these groups in governance and linked up with them. subsequent c
The ollaboration of academic social scientists and social development workers in
science-educated NGOs augured well for the articulation of development discourses and
successful advocacy of particular positions on salient issues.

I n t h e l a s t t o p i c , y o u l e a r n e d t h e v a r i o u s factors that paved the way to

the growth andd e v e l o p m e n t o f S o c i a l S t u d i e s i n t h e P h i l i p p i n e s .
Now, it is also essential t o understand the philosophical orientations in
theteaching of Social Studies. This topic presentsthe different philosophies of
education whichw i l l b e y o u r g u i d e l a t e r i n t e a c h i n g S o c i a l Studies. It is

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essential that you have a good foundation of this topic as this will be
yourinstrument in examining the concepts that areworth teaching and in
choosing your learningo b j e c t i v e s , s t r a t e g i e s , a n d a s s e s s m e n t o f learning.

You will learn in this topic that there arediverse philosophical thoughts and the
perspectives believed by teachersreveal their views about teaching, learning, learners,
and knowledge. Thismeans that teachers behave differently inside the classroom
because they viewtheir students, subject matter, classroom, assessment, and others
differently.The differences in their teaching behavior lies in the differences
ofphilosophies that they uphold as a person and as a professional teacher inside sand
outside the classroom. All philosophies discussed in this topic pertain to the diverging
perspectives or views about Social Studies Education. These questions include, but not
limited to: “What is the aim of Social Studies Education?”; “How should the classroom
atmosphere when teaching Social Studies?”; “What should be the content of the Social
Studies curriculum?”, and the like. Each of these perspectives presents conflicting
answers to these questions, but each perspective at one point or the other has its own
advantages and disadvantages.

Activity
1. Give the name of the “mother country” of Social Studies/
2. Highlight the role of NCSS in development and growth of Social Studies in the United
Stated of America.
3. Briefly highlight the relationship between the effect of the 2nd World War on Britain
and the growth of Social Studies in the country.
4. Explain about the growth of social studies in the Philippines.

CONCLUSION

The growth of Social Studies across the different parts of the world has been informed
by a variety of reasons and factors. For instance, it has been used as a partial solution

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for social problem in many countries of the worlds. In Germany, it was initiated after
the Second World War, as a means of developing a new political order. In British, Social
Studies was used to legitimatize the teaching of social sciences particularly sociology,
while preparing students for their role in the society. By the Butler Act of 1944, Britain
eventually looked up to the integrated Social Studies programme as an avenue for
promoting in her youths the socio-cultural values which Britain tradition has held in
esteem for a long time.

In United States of America (USA), Social Studies has continued its primary function of
preparing students for effective citizenship in democratic society and instilling patriotic
ideals in the young ones (Kissock, 1981)

SUMMARY
In this Unit, you have interacted with the various thoughts that influenced the
development and growth of Social Studies as a discipline of study in schools in the
different parts of the world with specific reference to the United States of America,
Britain, Africa and Nigeria in particular. The various factors that influenced such growth
and development have been highlighted. Chief of these factors were effect of wars on
the content of nations’ educational system, the need to use curriculum content to
emphasise and promote national and cultural values and build a firm base in citizens on
issues of national consciousness and integration.

The role which the development of Social Studies in Africa played on its growth in
Nigeria has equally been discussed with a remark that development of the subject in
Nigeria came earlier than those of other countries.

Basically, the earliest recipients of Social Studies are Americans and ever since its
development in the United States of America (USA), this has been instrumental to
development of the subject in other parts of the world.

Philosophy of social science, branch of philosophy that examines the concepts,

methods, and logic of the social sciences. The philosophy of social science is
consequently a metatheoretical endeavour—a theory about theories of social life. To
achieve their end, philosophers of social science investigate both the practice of the
social sciences and the nature of the entities that the social sciences study—namely,
human beings themselves. The philosophy of social science can be broadly descriptive

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(unearthing the fundamental conceptual tools in social science and relating them to the
tools employed in other human endeavours), prescriptive (recommending that a certain
approach be adopted by the social sciences so that they can accomplish what the
recommender thinks social science ought to accomplish), or some combination of the
two.

Historically, many philosophers of social science have taken the basic question of
their discipline to be whether the social sciences can be “scientific” in the same way
that the natural sciences are. The approach that answers this question affirmatively is
called naturalism, whereas that which answers it negatively is known as humanism,
though a number of theories attempt to combine these two approaches. Given this
framework, the term philosophy of social science is arguably misleading, because it
suggests that the discipline is concerned with the social sciences insofar as they are
sciences or scientific; thus the term seems to imply naturalism. To avoid this
suggestion, practitioners sometimes denominate their field of inquiry: “philosophy of
social inquiry” or “philosophy of social studies.” By whatever name the field is called, it
ought to be clear that whether or how the study of human social behaviour is scientific
is an open question that is part of the business of the philosopher of social sciences to
address.

Naming the area to be studied “social studies” calls attention to how wide the field of
inquiry into human behaviour and relations is. In addition to the
core disciplines of economics, political science, anthropology, and sociology, the social
studies also include such disparate disciplines as archaeology, demography,
human geography, linguistics, social psychology, and aspects of cognitive science,
among others. This should indicate the range of the field that the philosophy of social
sciences encompasses and how diverse the questions, methods, concepts, and
explanatory strategies are within the field.

Meanings and causes of human behaviour

Human actions can be described as self-evidently meaningful; they are typically

performed for a purpose and express an intention, and they also often follow rules that
make them the kinds of action they are. Thus, people do not simply move their limbs or
emit sounds, they vote or marry or sell or communicate, and, when they do, their
actions and relations appear to be different in kind from the behaviour of other animals,
especially nonconscious animals (such as sponges). Philosophers mark this difference
by saying that humans act, whereas entities that lack consciousness or that lack the
capacity to form intentions merely move.

How should the interpretation of the meanings of actions fit into the study of human
behaviour? Does it introduce elements that make such a study different in kind from
studying entities whose movements are not meaningful? Those who give
an affirmative answer to the latter of these questions insist that social science must
either be an interpretive endeavour or must at least provide a role for the interpretation
of meanings within it; for them, meaning is the central concept of the social sciences.

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German theorists of the late 19th century initially developed this line of thought by
conceiving of social science as the study of “spirit” ( Geisteswissenschaften). The
term spirit harkens back to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Phenomenology of
Spirit (1807), in which “spirit” referred in part to the broad intellectual and cultural
dimensions of a people. Philosophers such as Heinrich Rickert and Wilhem
Dilthey argued that human phenomena are the product of conscious and intentional
beings who became so by means of enculturation (the assimilation of a culture,
including its values and practices), and this means that the human sciences must
concentrate on meaning and its interpretation as they attempt to understand human
life.
This line of thought continued into the 20th century and beyond. Most notable was the
application of hermeneutics to the study of human social life. The
term hermeneutics derives from the Greek word hermeneuein (“to interpret”), which in
turn comes from the Greek word for the god Hermes, who carried messages from the
other gods. Hermeneutics is the theory of interpretation, originally of written texts and
later of all forms of human expression. It originated in the modern period in reflections
on the interpretation of the Bible. A number of hermeneutical theories of the social
sciences have been developed, the most significant being that of the German
philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer, presented in his masterpiece Wahrheit und
Methode (1960; Truth and Method), and that of the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur,
discussed in Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action, and
Interpretation (1981). Hermeneuticists argue that human actions are the expressions of
ideas and feelings and as such are essentially meaningful phenomena. To understand
them is more akin to interpreting a text or a painting than it is to dissecting the
contents of a cell and the causes that produced them. Meaning, not cause, and
understanding (meaning), not (causal) explanation, is the rallying point for philosophers
of social science of this persuasion, though they offer varied accounts of what is
entailed in interpreting meaning.

A cognate line of thinking developed largely in England and in the United States out of
the later philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, as represented especially in
his Philosophical Investigations (1953), a work that argued for the essentially social
nature of linguistic meaning, which it parsed in terms of rule
following. Analytic philosophers, most notably Peter Winch in The Idea of a Social
Science and Its Relation to Philosophy  (1958), applied this idea to the social sciences,
hoping to show that the study of human beings involves a scheme of concepts and
methods of analysis that are wholly unlike those in the natural sciences.

Phenomenology is another branch of philosophy that emphasizes the uniqueness of

beings who are conscious and who know that they are. The German
philosopher Edmund Husserl founded the phenomenological movement in the early
20th century. A number of important thinkers, most notably the American sociologist
and philosopher Alfred Schutz and the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty,
developed Husserl’s insights, suitably changing and refining them to make them
applicable to the study of human social life. Phenomenologists focus on the fact that
human doings are consciously undertaken and are thus essentially intentional in

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character. They have an “inside” that phenomenologists argue cannot be ignored when
they are studied. For this reason, humans cannot be studied in the way in
which plants and molecules are; instead, the structures of human consciousness must
be unearthed and shown how they are expressed in human relations and actions.
Human acts are typically gestural in that they express some psychological state and
cultural orientation, and much of what humans do is shaped by their culture and
psychological states—motives, desires, goals, feelings, and moods as well as the life-
world (the world as immediately or directly experienced), in which psychological beings
necessarily exist. The study of human life consequently involves such things
as empathy, attempting to relive what others have experienced and to grasp their
subjective states, and the like. This way of thinking has underwritten a variety of
approaches in the social sciences, the most well-known being ethnomethodology, a
school of sociology formulated by the American sociologist Harold Garfinkel in his classic
work Studies in Ethnomethodology (1967). Ethnomethodology seeks to uncover the
“taken-for-granted” structures of everyday life and to delineate how they are
maintained and changed over time.

The social sciences that figure most saliently in humanist approaches, which centrally
feature the interpretation of meaning and consciousness, are anthropology, history, and
those parts of sociology that focus on the margins of mainstream society. The reason
for this emphasis in sociology is that, when confronting the behaviour of those whose
linguistic, cultural, and conceptual worlds are significantly different from their own,
social analysts cannot ignore questions of meaning. Moreover, these disciplines
strikingly confront a host of questions that trouble philosophers of social science,
questions that are grouped around the topic of relativism (the doctrine that either
experience, assessments of value, or even reality itself is a function of a particular
conceptual scheme; these views are called, respectively, epistemological, moral, and
ontological relativism).

But not all philosophers of social science believe that meaning is something on which
the social sciences should focus. Despite the fact that human actions and relations are
clearly meaningful on the surface, some philosophies of social science have denied that
meaning ultimately has (or should have) a fundamental role to play in the social
sciences. One of the most noteworthy of these approaches is behaviourism, which
dispenses with inner mental states and cultural meanings altogether. Instead, human
behaviour is conceived as a series of responses to external stimuli, responses that are
regulated by the patterns of conditioning that have been inculcated into the organism.

Other approaches that deny that the interpretation of meaning is of fundamental import
in the social sciences include systems theory and structuralism. Systems theory
conceives of society as an entity each of whose various parts plays a certain role or
performs a certain function in order to maintain society or to keep it in equilibrium;
such roles are played by those who inhabit them, whether they know that they are
doing so or not. Structuralism asserts that agents do not create the structure of
meanings through which they act; rather, as social subjects, they are “created” by this
structure, of which their acts are mere expressions. As a result, the purpose of social
science is to unearth the elements of this structure and to reveal its inner logic. In both
systems theory and structuralism, the meaning that behaviour has for those engaging
in it is ultimately irrelevant to its explanation. Behaviourists, systems theorists, and
structuralists base their approaches on the assumption that human behaviour is the
result of prior causes in the same way that the behaviour of plants and animals is.

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The nature of theory in social science

Beyond the intentions and meanings associated with behaviour, social scientists are
also interested in mapping out the basic structures of society and the resources, social
and otherwise, that underwrite these structures. They are also concerned with the
unintended consequences of actions and relations. In all of these investigations, social
scientists go beyond deciphering the meaning and import of acts and relations to
uncover their broader causes and effects. Indeed, depending on how broad and
successful social science is in this task, causal explanations become integrated into
theories of social life—theories that typically go far beyond the self-understandings of
the agents involved. Examples include Keynesian or monetarist theories
in economics, kinship theories in anthropology, and modernization theory in political
science and sociology. Questions about the nature of social-scientific theorizing abound:
for example, can theories in the social sciences involve genuine laws, and what makes a
regularity into a law? Can the social sciences make warranted predictions about future
actions or relationships? Should the social sciences ultimately aim at explanation in
terms of individual actions or in terms of groups or group structures (i.e., should
fundamental explanations in the social sciences be individualistic or holistic)?

To these sorts of questions, humanists have sometimes insisted that causality in the

social sciences is different in kind than causality in the natural sciences. Others have
tried to work out a middle road that combines the best of both the naturalist approach,
with its focus on causality, and the humanist approach, which focuses on meaning. The
methodological writings of the German sociologist Max Weber are a particularly vivid
instance of this.

An important class of theories in the social sciences—so-called competence theories—

constitute a distinctive type. Theories of this type explain human behaviour as arising
from principles of rationality or from internalized systems of rules. Examples
include game theory (including prisoner’s dilemma games), Noam Chomsky’s theory
of transformational grammar, and Jürgen Habermas’s theory of communicative
competence. These examples are indicative of the ways in which theorizing in the social
sciences may be fundamentally different from that in the natural sciences.

Meaningful actions involve rationality because they consist of following rules,

procedures, principles, and the like. For example, in order to christen a ship, a speaker
may need to act in accordance with linguistic rules that specify the circumstances in
which an utterance of the form “I christen thee” counts as a christening of a ship. Or,
again, principles of economic reasoning specify how much product to bring to market in
order to maximize profit. An actor’s competence is his mastery of the rules or norms of
rationality that apply to a particular activity, and competence theories are those that
seek to describe in detail what these rules and norms are. They proceed by discovering
how an idealized actor who is perfectly rational or who has perfectly mastered the
relevant rules would behave in various situations.

Another way in which theories in the social sciences are different from those in the
natural sciences is that the entities being explained in the social sciences (i.e., human
beings), unlike those being explained in the natural sciences, themselves possess their
own theories about what they and others are doing. One might call these theories the

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agents’ self-understanding or their ideology. Moreover, it is plausible to claim (though
some theorists have denied this) that agents’ ideology is an important element of any
account of how they behave. But this raises the question of what is the relationship, in
social-scientific theories, between, on the one hand, the ideology and self-
understanding of the agents and, on the other, the theoretical constructs that social-
scientific observers of their behaviour might propose. Does the former
take precedence over the latter? Does the former constrain the latter? These are
questions that philosophers of the natural sciences need not address, because the
phenomena studied in the natural sciences are not the product of the ideology of that
which is being studied. Indeed, the notion of ideology points to an activity crucial in the
social sciences but one potentially in tension with its scientific aspirations,
namely, critique.
The role of critique in social science

Critique becomes a possible dimension of social science because the self-

understandings that serve as a basis for the actions and relations of agents may
themselves be systematically mistaken. That is, agents’ self-understandings may be at
variance with their situation, and they may characterize themselves and others (their
motivations, their emotions, their beliefs, etc.) in ways that manifest ignorance or even
self-deception. They may be under the control of an ideology that masks their social
and personal reality, or they may be the victims of an irrationality that hinders them
and makes them act in unintelligent or deluded ways. Such irrationality may lie beneath
their frustrations or the social conflicts in which they perforce find themselves. All of
this suggests that, in order to understand and explain what such people are doing and
how they are relating to others, social scientists must engage in what is called ideology
critique: they must assess the accuracy and rationality of the basic self-understandings
of those whom they study, they must explain why and how any misunderstandings
arose and continue to function, and they must suggest in what ways these
misunderstandings can be corrected. Examples of important social theories for which
ideology critique is central are those of Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Habermas, and
some feminist theories.

Deconstruction is yet another form of critique in the social sciences, one inspired by the
work of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida and by postmodernism more generally.
Deconstruction is the procedure in which that which is hidden in an entity (such as a
category or a social formation) is brought to light and shown to be part of the entity,
even though it was ostensibly something antithetical to it. For example, the category
“heterosexual,” and a social order based on this category, might rest on a contrast
between heterosexuality and homosexuality, in which the latter is typically conceived as
defective. But deconstruction might show that heterosexual identity is in fact
parasitically dependent on homosexuality, even as the former tries to exclude or
subordinate the latter—indeed, it might show that the difference between these two
terms is constitutive of their meaning and, thus, that homosexuality is a hidden aspect
of the identity of heterosexuals. What is true for the opposition between heterosexuality
and homosexuality may also be true for other antinomies: white versus black, colonizer
versus colonized, sane versus mad, or saved versus damned.

The assessment of rationality or the coherence of schemes of meaning (including

ideology critique and deconstruction) raise questions about the objectivity of social
science. How do social scientists go about assessing rationality or coherence in a way
that avoids simply judging others on the basis of the scientist’s own predilections? Of

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course, questions about objectivity arise even if assessments of rationality and
coherence play no essential role in the social sciences, for the simple reason that social
science investigates phenomena that include the social scientists themselves and that
often have close bearing on their own values and on what they hope or fear for
themselves and their fellow humans. Questions about the conditions and nature of
objectivity are thus a central concern of the philosophy of social sciences.

AMERICAN COLONIAL EDUCATION

The system of public education introduced in the country by American colonialism had
both positive and negative effects on Filipino women. On the positive side, it
substantially increased their level of literacy and gave daughters of countless poor
families the opportunity to break away from traditional gender-related roles. American
colonial education also provided Filipino women, particularly those of middle-class
background, the necessary skills, ability and confidence to fight for legal and political
adulthood and assume responsible roles in public life. However, these developments
must be seen within the framework of the overall thrust and objectives of American
colonialism. This article argues that the kind of education the Filipino women 1·eceived
during the American colonial period p1·imarily prepared them to respond to the
demands of the colonial bureaucracy and economy. The public schools did not actively
promote gender equality; on the contrary they peddled the same patriarchal ideas and
systems of gender relations that Spain brought to the Philippines. Even if the level of
female literacy increased, therefore, and more women gained access to new types of
work and careers, these were not enough to bring them on equal footing with men.
American colonial education shaped the consciousness of the Filipino women in a
manner that, ultimately, did not bring the country and herself much good. With the fear
of the devil and the restrictive influence of the convent morality behind her, she
metamorphosed into a "modern" woman, comfortable with all the trappings of western
life and ethos as well as with traditional patriarchal norms and practices. She more than
willingly assumed her role in the production line even if doing so meant subordination
to men. The female product of American colonial education learned to exercise her right
to cast the ballot, but only to root for sexist male political candidates or endorse
political programs discriminatory to her own interest. Finally, by being in the forefront
of education as teachers of millions of school children, she played a most decisive role
in carrying on the task left behind by the Thomasites, that of propagating and
maintaining colonial consciousness in the country.

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Spanish Legacy
Contrary to popular belief, the Americans were not the first to bring the concept of
universal primary education to the Philip· pines. An education decree passed in 1863
mandated the establishment of a complete system of education in the country
consisting of elementary, secondary and tertiary levels. Notable among the provisions of
the decree were the call for compulsory education for children between the ages of
seven and twelve and state support for elementary textbooks and basic :5chool
supplies. The decree also mandated the establishment of teacher training schools and
training centers of arts and trades in Manila and Iloilo as well as a nautical school, also
in Manila. Spanish was made the official medium of instruction in all levels.
Despite the well-meaning intentions of the aforementioned educational reform, it did
not significantly improve the level of literacy in the country. Many aspects of the decree
were not adequately enforced because of strong resistance from Catholic priests and
lack of funds. Nevertheless, state-supported village schools were established which, by
1866, numbered 1474 (Mendoza-Guanzon, 1928:19). Forty-three percent of these
schools were opened exclusively for girls. When the Americans occupied the Islands in
1898, the total number of primary schools reached 8,167 and the total student
population was 200,000 (Isidro, 1952: 15-16). The first socio-economic census taken at
the turn of the century estimated the female literacy rate at only ten percent in contrast
to the male rate of nearly thirty percent (Reyes, 1951 :2}.
The curriculum at the primary level consisted of reading, writing, arithmetic, geography,
Christbn doctrine, Spanish grammar and music. Boys were given basic training in
agriculture and the girls, in needlework.
Mendoza-Guanzon (1928: 17-18) described that village classes generally consisted of
two sessions a day, the first was from eight to eleven in the morning and the other,
from two to five in the afternoon. Learning was essentially done by rote memory and
pupils were heavily subjected to verbal and physical forms of discipline and punishment.
Boys and girls alike were made to stand still for hours with arms raised forward; they
were whipped with the use of wood, bamboo stick or leather strap. At other times, they
were pinched or punished. These practices, she claimed, kept the schools almost
deserted. Instead of attending classes, children often stayed home and helped with
farm and household chores. Before the education reform of 1863, elementary training
was left entirely in the hands of priests or curates of the parish (Philippine Stud1es
Program of the University of Chicago, 1956). There were few schools and practically all

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were for the children of the Spaniards, mestizos and rich natives. Fresnoza (1950 :31)
described the program of education undertaken by the Catholic church during the early
part of Spanish colonial rule thus:

Education in the Philippines during the American Period (1898-1942)

Educational Goals
Educational goal during the American period is to promote democratic ideals and way of
life; formation of good citizens, including the rights and responsibilities of people.

Highlights of Education during the American Time

Education Act of 1901 laid the foundation of the Philippine Public school system. In
August 1901, 600 teachers are called “Thomasites” arrived. English was made medium
of instruction.

Curricular structure and programs were patterned from the U.S. There were 3levels of
education: Elementary level, Secondary or High school level, and College or Tertiary
level. New subject areas were introduced.

Religion was not included in the curriculum of the schools. Normal, vocational,
agricultural, and business schools were also opened. Schools were also built in non-
Catholic areas like Sulu in Mindanao, and in Mountain Province.

Education under American colonization led to a widespread Americanization of the

Philippines. Through education, Americans had influenced many Filipinos in terms of
what they like, eat, culture, and demand on westernized products and lifestyle.

Benefits and Anticipated Outcomes

1. The spread of providing public education: it’s known that US spearheaded
more aggressively the provision and delivery of schooling paid by public coffers to
unheard-of-areas of the archipelago. During the US occupation, it became fashionable
to go to elementary and high school, and for the same to go to college. This generally
introduced the hazy idea behind spreading enlightenment to majority of the populace
which up to now continues.

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2. The introduction of the concept of “press freedom,” which
still continues in the country, through not a few journalists and media practitioners
have died in the course of duty lately. Consequently, and up to now, there’s particularly
no other country, at least Asia that maybe described as having a “freer” media,
i.e. nosy and rambunctious, than what can be seen in the Philippines (and
it’s guaranteed in the constitution)

3. The continuation on putting too much value on elitism among its leaders plus their
influential relatives, although not spoken loudly in most sectors ofsociety.

4. The collaborative and dependent tendencies of the national Philippine government

with the US government in certain areas of governance have always been noted and
observed, especially if viewed by outsider. The Philippines continues to be a solid ally of
the US in Asia, in many years, even up to these days, which gives some people strong
ideas that it’s still “colony” up to now.

5. Most American cultural effects continue to be felt and followed in practically the
whole Philippines. This goes on practically in all field, from the use of English (which an
official language, as mandated in its constitution), the distribution of US-made movies
and TV shows in all media circuits, the tunes of music played, latest fashion styles etc,

6. And up to certain extent, the US occupation had opened up the gateways for some
other religions to be extensively introduced to the Philippines, most particularly the
many brands of Protestantism. The impact of the said occupation may soon dissipate,
even before most of us interested viewers may have the luxury of time to notice it.

References:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/philosophy-of-social-science/The-nature-of-theory-in-
social-science

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https://www.academia.edu/6945428/
Education_in_the_Philippines_during_the_American_Period_1898_1942

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