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Parker
Fourteenth Edition
ISBN 978-1-29204-133-9
Walter C. Parker
Fourteenth Edition
9 781292 041339
Social Studies Education: What and Why
M A I N I D E A The purpose of social studies education is to help

students develop social understanding (i.e., knowledge of people and
places near and far [geography] and now and then [history]) and civic
efficacy (i.e., the ability to think and act as a democratic citizen in a
diverse nation and an interdependent world).
W hen I was in elementary school in Englewood, Colorado, just south of Denver,

I loved social studies. I had brilliant teachers, and they taught us social stud-
ies every day, every week, and every month. It was serious social studies, not social
studies “lite.” They introduced us to the knowledge and skills of the social sciences
while preparing us to hold the highest office in the land: citizen. It was challenging,
it was fun, and it was with social studies material that my reading and writing skills
developed.
Those of us from Lowell Elementary School appeared to our middle school
teachers to be the smart kids, which was not the case; we were just well taught. Prior
knowledge always makes a student look smart. Our elementary teachers gave us that
gift: By the time we got to middle school, we already knew something about what
these new teachers wanted to teach us. We had a foundation they could build on. Best
of all, the teachers at Lowell didn’t simply load us up with facts and skills. They
taught us ideas and ignited a lifelong interest in them.
My experience in elementary school fueled more than my love of social studies
subject matter. It also fueled my interest in how children can develop a solid founda-
tion in social studies before they go on to middle and high school. I think of that
often, and it pervades this book. In the primary grades (kindergarten–3rd), what
should children be learning about social studies? And then how can they best build
on that in the intermediate grades (4th–5th)? And then in the middle grades
(6th–8th)? Simply put, social studies education is powerful, and not having access to
it, for whatever reason, is disabling intellectually, socially, and morally.
Without historical understanding, there can be no wisdom; without geographi-
cal understanding, no cultural or environmental intelligence. Without economic
understanding, there can be no sane use of resources and no rational approach to
decision making and, therefore, no future. And without civic understanding, there
can be no democratic citizens and, therefore, no democracy.
This is why social studies education matters. When children are empowered by
knowledgeable and skillful teachers with the information, ideas, skills, and attitudes
and values that compose the social studies curriculum, their judgment is improved.
Consequently, they can reason historically, help solve community problems, embrace
diversity, fight intolerance and bigotry, protect the environment, and, with deep
understanding, empathize with the hopes, dreams, and struggles of people everywhere.
3
Goals for Social Studies: Social

Understanding and Civic Efficacy
There are two primary goals of social studies education, and they are the guiding
lights of most social studies curriculum standards. “Standards,” as we will see later
in this chapter and throughout the book, are statements that describe what students
should learn—the desired results of instruction, also called objectives. But curricu-
lum standards—whether national, state, or local school district standards—are not
to be confused with the broad goals or purposes of curriculum and instruction. Stan-
dards make no sense unless we know the goals they are aiming to achieve. To get at
the goals of social studies, let’s begin with a definition.
According to the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), social studies
. . . is the integrated study of the social sciences and humanities to promote civic
competence. The primary purpose of social studies is to help young people develop
the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens
of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world.2
On one side of this definition is the subject matter that is studied. “Subject mat-
ter” is the what of teaching and learning—the curriculum. It includes the facts (also
known as information or data), ideas, skills, issues (short for “controversial issues”),
and methods of inquiry drawn from the seven social sciences: history, geography,
civics and government (political science), economics, sociology, psychology, and an-
thropology. The humanities—philosophy, ethics, literature, religion, music, and the
visual and performing arts—are involved as well.3 These fields of study or “disci-
plines” serve as resources: The social studies curriculum draws on them, blending
and integrating them with two additional ingredients—students’ cultural experiences
and society’s needs. But to what ends? What is the purpose?
On the other side of the definition is the purpose, “civic competence” or demo-
cratic citizenship: “the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the pub-
lic good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent
world.” Civic competence is the readiness and willingness to assume citizenship re-
sponsibilities. These responsibilities include more than just voting. For in a democ-
racy, it is also one’s responsibility to serve on juries, to be lawful, and to be just.
(“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” famously said by Martin
Luther King, Jr.4) One is expected to be tolerant of political and cultural differences,
one is expected to participate in creating and evaluating public policy, and it is one’s
duty to be civic-minded—to think not only of oneself and one’s own rights and free-
doms but also of the good of the whole community.
In a nutshell, then, social studies education has two goals: social understanding
(i.e., knowledge of human societies) and civic competence (i.e., democratic citizen-
ship). When developing any social studies unit or reading any set of curriculum stan-
dards for social studies, keep an eye on these two the goals.
4
Schools typically approach these two broad goals by way of three subgoals:
knowledge, attitudes and values, and skills. More specific objectives (or “standards”)
are typically listed under each subgoal. When readers examine their state and local
social studies curriculum standards, they will most likely find that the standards take
this form or one that is similar. Please take some time now to find out.
Knowledge
Which social knowledge is most important? We can answer this question in three
ways: disciplines, themes, and topics.
One way to determining which social knowledge is most important is to refer to
the disciplines (also called fields) of study. These are the seven social science disci-
plines and the humanities. Within these disciplines, knowledge is systematically cre-
ated, interpreted, critiqued, and revised continually in a never-ending process of
disciplined (i.e., it’s systematic, not random or without rules of inquiry) knowledge
construction. But these are large fields containing huge amounts of ideas, informa-
tion, and methods of inquiry.
Another approach is to identify a set of basic content themes. Themes help cur-
riculum planners and teachers narrow the scope somewhat and give them a better
idea of which social knowledge deserves the most attention. The Curriculum Stan-
dards for Social Studies created by the National Council for the Social Studies iden-
tifies 10 such themes. They have become the best-known knowledge themes for social
studies instruction in the elementary and middle grades and have been incorporated
into a number of state and local social studies standards frameworks:
1. Culture
2. Time, Continuity, and Change
3. People, Places, and Environments
4. Individual Development and Identity
5. Individuals, Groups, and Institutions
6. Power, Authority, and Governance
7. Production, Distribution, and Consumption
8. Science, Technology, and Society
9. Global Connections
10. Civic Ideals and Practices
Please take a minute now to look at A Sampler of Curriculum Standards for

Social Studies. You can find it at this textbook’s website at www.myeducationlab.
com. Find the brief descriptions of each of the 10 themes. The remainder of the
Sampler spells out each of these 10 standards and gives teaching examples called
“snapshots.” This will be a helpful resource for you as you plan lessons and units.
5
A third way to answer the “Which knowledge is most important?” question is

to identify topics. There is no shortage of topics, and of course they cannot all be
taught and no one would want to learn them all. One scholar, E. D. Hirsch, Jr., pro-
duced a list of over 5,000 topics that he thought elementary school children in the
United States should learn in order to give them a common knowledge base.5 With-
out this, he argued, there can be no common culture that bridges our many cultural
differences. But most educators, while sympathetic to Hirsch’s thesis that shared
knowledge is important, found his list too long and too fragmented to be of much
help in curriculum development. A more typical and manageable set of topics for unit
development in each of the elementary grades appears in the next section on curricu-
lum scope and sequence. For example, elementary students should know:
● Great river systems of the world

● Desert cultures and forest cultures
● Food, clothing, transportation, and shelter (now and then, near and far)
● Ancient societies and modern societies
● Geographic regions of the United States
● The American Revolution and Constitution
● Rights and responsibilities of citizens
Attitudes and Values

The second subgoal of social studies learning—attitudes and values—is directed less
at cognitive knowledge and more at emotion, feeling, and beliefs about right and
wrong. Particular attitudes (also called dispositions, traits, and virtues) and values
are essential to democratic citizenship. Sometimes these are divided into two cate-
gories and listed separately, as we will see in Chapter 3, but for now we can lump
them together in order to distinguish them from knowledge and the third subgoal:
skills. Without attitudes and values, like a boat without a rudder or a hiker with no
compass, democratic government and civic life would be impossible. The following
are typical of what is listed in state and local curriculum guidelines.
1. Being committed to the public values of this society as suggested in its histori-
cal documents, laws, court decisions, and oaths (e.g., from the Declaration of
Independence, “all men are created equal”; from the Pledge of Allegiance,
“liberty and justice for all”)
2. Being able to deal fairly and effectively with value conflicts that arise when
making decisions about the common good (public policy)
3. Developing a reasoned loyalty to this nation and its form of government.
(Note that the Pledge of Allegiance is made not to a person, but to a form of
government: a “republic”; that is, a constitutional democracy)
4. Developing a feeling of kinship to human beings everywhere—to the human
family
6
5. Taking responsibility for one’s actions and fulfilling one’s obligations to the
community
Skills
The third subgoal—skills—identifies what students should know how to do. Of
course, doing involves knowing; skillful behavior is skillful to a great extent because
of the knowledge that supports it. A child is skillful at something because he or she
knows how to do it well. A skill, then, is also called know-how or procedural knowl-
edge. Skills are often subdivided as follows:
I. Democratic Participation Skills

A. Listening to and expressing opinions and reasons
B. Participating in classroom, school, and community decision making,
especially participating in group discussions of public issues
(classroom, community, international) with persons with whom one
may disagree; leading such discussions; mediating, negotiating, and
compromising
C. Working cooperatively to clarify a task and plan group work
D. Accessing, using, and creating community resources
II. Study and Inquiry Skills
A. Using and making time lines, maps, globes, charts, and graphs
B. Locating, reading, and analyzing information from a variety of
resources, such as books, encyclopedias, the Internet, newspapers, and
libraries
C. Writing reports and giving oral presentations
D. Distinguishing between primary and secondary sources
E. Forming and testing hypotheses
III. Intellectual Skills (critical thinking and problem solving)
A. Comparing and contrasting
B. Making and evaluating conclusions based on evidence
C. Identifying and clarifying problems and issues
D. Distinguishing fact from opinion
E. Inferring cause-effect relationships
As you will see later in this chapter, there is today a

flurry of activity to identify what are being called “21st
century skills.” These cut across the school subjects (math, REFLECTION Many school sub-
science, social studies, language arts) and hope to present jects comprise knowledge and skills, but so-
“a holistic view of 21st century teaching and learning.”6
cial studies emphasizes attitudes and values,
Critical thinking, collaboration, and media literacy are
too. How are they different, and why are
emphasized. This is an exciting trend that may help
both important?
schools innovate and transform teaching and learning for
the current era.
7
Curriculum Scope and Sequence

So far we have been considering the goals of social studies teaching and learning.
Now it is time to understand the idea of “scope and sequence.”
Building a firm foundation in an earlier grade to support learning that should
occur in a later grade is the reason curriculum directors and standards authors care-
fully plan the scope and sequence of a social studies program. The scope of the pro-
gram refers to the subject matter—the knowledge, values and attitudes, and
skills—that the program is to include. The sequence is the order in which the various
subject matters are to be presented.
As for scope, it is not the purpose of the elementary school to teach the social
science disciplines apart from their relevance to children’s lives or society’s problems
and needs. Disciplinary knowledge should be taught in ways that will help children
gain insight into the social and physical world in which they live. When children are
making islands and mountains on the classroom floor or learning to draw maps of
the playground, they are dealing with geography in simple ways. When they are asked
to explain why they need agreed-upon rules in the games they play and then drama-
tize the signing of the U.S. Constitution, and then create a classroom constitution—
a rule book they agree to follow—they are having their first brush with history and
government. Moreover, the teacher is connecting the social studies curriculum to stu-
dents’ lives outside school. When students compare and contrast the playground bully
to the elected classroom president, they are beginning to understand basic ideas from
political science (law and legitimate authority). In these ways, the subject matter is
connected to what the children already know and do. But the curriculum also broad-
ens their horizons, taking them to distant places and times—to the signing of the Con-
stitution in Philadelphia, the life of a scribe in Cleopatra’s court, the sisters and their
cousins who carry drinking water from the well to their village in the Sahara desert,
and village life in one of the first farming communities thousands of years ago. So,
the social studies curriculum is connected to the child’s life, and it enlarges that life
outward to include the less familiar, the far away, and the long ago. Of course, role-
playing and simulations—playing, pretending, and imagining—help to make all this
vivid and concrete. Being asked what really happened and how they know that to be
true, again and again, familiarizes them with the “disciplined” ways of knowing that
mark the social sciences.
As for curriculum sequence, ordinarily topics that have a concrete and familiar
focus for children are included in the primary grades—topics such as homes and
houses, schools and stores, local rivers and lakes, the clothes (what anthropologists
call “costume”) the children are wearing and the foods they are eating and where
these come from and how they are grown and shipped. Topics that are more remote
in space and time, such as the nation, the United Nations, and regions of the world,
are focal points in the intermediate and middle grades. It must be emphasized, how-
ever, that this does not mean that first-graders spend a year studying their own fam-
ilies, or that second-graders study only the local neighborhood or third-graders only
8
Dramatizations
with simple sets bring
geography to life.
(Photo courtesy of Anthony
Magnacca/Merrill)
the local community. Rather, a compare-and-contrast approach should be used, for

it builds intellectual strength and conceptual power, and broadens students’ horizons.
For example, children should learn how local houses and apartments are similar to
and different from shelters long ago and far away. The same is true for families, neigh-
borhoods, and communities.
Here is a popular scope-and-sequence plan from the National Council for the
Social Studies.
Kindergarten—Awareness of Self in a Social Setting

Grade 1—The Individual in Primary Social Groups: Understanding School
and Family Life
Grade 2—Meeting Basic Needs in Nearby Social Groups: Neighborhoods
Grade 3—Sharing Earth-Space with Others: Communities
Grade 4—Human Life in Varied Environments: Regions
Grade 5—People of the Americas: The United States and Its Neighbors
Grade 6—People and Cultures: The Eastern Hemisphere
Grade 7—A Changing World of Many Nations: A Global View
Grade 8—Building a Strong and Free Nation: The United States
Grade 9—Systems That Make a Democratic Society Work: Law, Justice, and
Economics
Grade 10—Origins of Major Cultures: A World History
Grade 11—The Maturing of America: United States History
Grade 12—One-year course or courses required, such as U.S. Government &
Politics; Comparative Government & Politics; Problems of Modern Society;
International Studies7
9
A powerful sequencing principle is the “spiral” curriculum. As the brilliant psy-

chologist Jerome Bruner described it, “ideas are first presented in a form and lan-
guage (that) can be grasped by the child, ideas that can be revisited later with greater
precision and power until, finally, the student has achieved the reward of mastery.”8
A concept like “family” can be grasped—in a very simple way—by the five-year-old
with reference to her own family, families that live nearby, and the families of her
friends and relatives. She notices the similarities and differences across these nearby
examples and constructs in her own mind the idea of “family.” But later, in a unit on
family life in India and Kenya, she encounters new and different examples—including
the Kenyan Masai family with many wives and children and not a cat or dog but a
cow. Then, in a high school Law and Society class, she learns about family law (cus-
tody issues, marriage benefits, civil unions, etc.). In college, she might write a thesis
called “The Changing Family in Europe and Africa.” Through years of study of a sin-
gle concept, the student’s understanding of it becomes increasingly complex—both
differentiated (she can talk about the similarities and differences that exist within
families across history and geography) and elaborated (she has a detailed understand-
ing of various examples and of the popular and scholarly debates that occur over the
definition of “family”). Figure 1.1 displays one sketch of a plan for spiralling three
concepts.
Shall we pull all this together? Look again at the 10 themes identified in the Cur-
riculum Standards for Social Studies. How might these themes be used with a scope-
and-sequence plan of this kind? It is important to note that the 10 themes are ideas
or, more precisely, concepts. Furthermore, as the Curriculum Standards for Social
Studies make clear, these themes are recommended as the basis for instruction in each
grade, kindergarten through 12th. What we can do is select a grade level from the
Figure 1.1 Spiral curriculum.
Worldwide examples grade 6
National examples grade 5
State examples grade 4
Local examples grade 3
Clothing Government Landform

CONCEPT
10
scope-and-sequence plan here (or one provided by your local school district) and use
the 10 themes to help plan conceptually rich units and lessons. Let’s select, as an
example, the grade 3 emphasis—communities—and think of some focus questions
that will engage children with each of the 10 themes.
What does this involve? The example that follows uses two resources to create
a powerful third-grade social studies curriculum. I took the third-grade topic “Com-
munities” from the preceding scope-and-sequence recommendation and then elabo-
rated the scope of that topic by using the 10 conceptual themes from the Curriculum
Standards for Social Studies.
Take some time now to draft a similar example for another grade level. This
will provide experience in thinking conceptually about the social studies topical empha-
sis of a given grade level. We applied the 10 conceptual themes to the topic of com-
munities, but the same process can be followed for the second-grade emphasis—
neighborhoods—or the fourth-grade emphasis—geographic regions—or the fifth-grade
emphasis—United States history—and so on. You may need the accompanying Sampler
to bolster your understanding of the 10 themes.
GRADE 3 SHARING EARTH-SPACE WITH OTHERS: COMMUNITIES
1. Culture. How does life in our community government in our community, and who
differ from life in our sister cities in Japan serves in them?
and Russia? 7. Production, Distribution, and Consumption.
2. Time, Continuity, and Change. What What things do people in our community
were the turning points in our community’s want and need? What do we make in our
history? community and what do we have to im-
3. People, Places, and Environments. How did port? How are these different from the
our community come to be located where wants and needs in our sister cities in other
it is, and how would our lives be different if countries?
it were located on the edge of the sea, in a 8. Science, Technology, and Society. How do
desert, or high in the mountains? our values influence the use of buses and
4. Individual Development and Identity. How cars in this community?
does learning in school differ from learning 9. Global Connections and Interdependence.
that takes place elsewhere in our commu- What three products are imported in the
nity—on the job, on the playing field, at greatest quantities to our community? Are
home, at a city council meeting? any products exported?
5. Individuals, Groups, and Institutions. What 10. Civic Ideals and Practices. Who is eligible
after-school clubs do young people belong to vote in this community? Where can
to in our community, and how do they dif- they register to vote? What percentage
fer from those in our sister cities in Japan of them voted in the last presidential
and Russia? election? In the last local election? What
6. Power, Authority, and Governance. can our class do to encourage eligible
What are the three branches of voters to vote?
11
This is one of the most important curriculum-planning habits any teacher can
develop. Its gist is to apply the 10 NCSS conceptual themes to the subject matter top-
ics emphasized at a given grade level. In so doing, the scope of the topic is expanded
and deepened so that a student’s understanding is also expanded and deepened. With-
out this kind of planning, the teacher may be limited to skating across the thin sur-
face of a topic, communicating facts about it perhaps, but not helping students to
organize the facts into big ideas that they can then apply to the next topic, and the
next, and so on.
With this kind of curriculum planning, students not only learn the topic that is
currently emphasized but also learn it in a way that will help them grasp more about
subsequent topics in the curriculum sequence. What results is a snowball effect that
empowers students in each subsequent grade. Researchers call this the Matthew
effect, named after the idea expressed in the biblical Book of Matthew: the rich get
richer and the poor get poorer. The rich get richer because they are able to invest their
surplus, earning still more, which they can reinvest, and so on. The analogy to edu-
cation is that the knowledgeable become more knowledgeable. The knowledge they
already possess enables them to learn still more. Children become more knowledge-
able because their prior knowledge serves as a fertile seedbed in which subsequent
knowledge can take root.9 A mind furnished with powerful concepts is fertile ground
for the germination of new ideas.
Unit Topics by Grade Level

This section provides examples of unit topics taught in grades K–8 in schools across
the nation. These examples should not be construed as a model curriculum; they will
not be precisely the same as those found in any specific school program. Rather, the
intention here is to help readers gain a better idea of what subject matter may actu-
ally be taught at different grade levels.
Kindergarten
Kindergarten programs ordinarily deal with topics that help to familiarize children
with their immediate surroundings. The home and school provide the setting for these
studies. With some kindergarten children, it is possible to include, in a simple way,
references to the world beyond their immediate environment.
Rules for Safe Living Our Earth

America the Beautiful People Change the Land
Working Together at School Hooray for Holidays
Grade 1
Grade 1 studies are based in the local area, such as the school and neighborhood, but
the local area is connected to the larger world. Basic work with history and geography
12
begins. Units should provide for easy transition from the near at hand to the far
away and back again at frequent intervals.
Who We Are and Where We Live Our Country Now and Long Ago
Families at Work Explorations Near and Far
Families Around the World Cities, Islands, Jungles
Grade 2
The grade 2 program provides for frequent and systematic contact with the world
beyond the neighborhood. By studying transportation, communication, food distri-
bution, and travel, children begin to learn how their part of the world is connected
to other places on Earth.
Comparing Holidays Food, Clothing, and Shelter (cultural universals)

Exploring Our Past Transportation and Communication
We the People: Elections How Neighborhoods Change
Grade 3
The grade 3 program often emphasizes the larger community concept: what a commu-
nity is, types of communities, how communities provide for basic needs, how they are
governed, their history, and their variety around the world. A comparative approach
is recommended.
Rural and Urban Communities Community Workers

Native and Newcomer Communities Our City’s Government
Washington, D.C.: Our Nation’s Capital Tokyo: Japan’s Capital
“My” neighborhood,
school, and house.
Maps reveal the
spaces of our lives.
(Photo courtesy of Silver
Burdett Ginn)
13
Grade 4
In grade 4, the geographic regions of the United States are often stressed. Home-state
history is also common (often by legislative requirement). A comparative approach
is recommended: comparing the home state with other states and the home region
with other regions.
History and People of the Home State

Regions of the United States: The West, Southwest, Midwest, Northeast, and
South
Deserts and Forests of the World (world regional comparisons)
Rivers of the World (world regional comparisons)
The Three Branches of Democratic Government
Grade 5
Almost all schools include the geography and history of the United States in the grade
5 program. The program may focus on the United States alone or the United States
plus Canada and Latin America. The 5th-grade emphasis should be coordinated with
the 8th- and 11th-grade programs in order to revisit difficult concepts (e.g., colony,
constitutional democracy, slavery, civil war, culture, pluralism, region, justice, civil
rights). Commonly, units coincide with historical eras. In some states, students are in-
troduced to all eras in grade 5; in others, coverage extends only through the topics in
the following left-hand column. The final unit of the school year may focus on one of
the U.S. neighbors, Canada or Mexico. In other districts, this unit occurs in grade 6.
The American Land The Institution of Slavery

The Native Americans The Civil War
European–Native Encounters The New Nation’s Westward Expansion
The American Colonies The Industrial Revolution
War for Independence The World Wars
Creating a New Nation The Civil Rights Movement
Grades 6 and 7
Sixth-grade programs may include the study of Latin America and Canada, the his-
tory and geography of the Eastern Hemisphere, ancient civilizations, or world geo-
graphic regions. Each of these patterns is common. A major limitation of grade 6
programs is that they attempt to deal with too many topics, often resulting in a smat-
tering of exposure an inch deep and a mile wide. Not only is this not powerful learn-
ing, but it’s also boring! The same criticism applies to the seventh grade. Stronger
programs emerge if teachers carefully select a few units representative of basic con-
cepts that have wide applicability. For example, a class need not study each poor na-
tion to gain some understanding of the problems of developing countries. An in-depth
study of two would provide both depth and contrast.
The content of the grade 7 program depends on that of grade 6. The Eastern
Hemisphere and world regions are popular choices for this grade. World geography
14
is also included in some districts, as are studies of the home state. California schools
shift from ancient civilizations in the sixth grade to medieval and early modern
times in the seventh. Note in the following that the term hemisphere, not civilization,
is used. To the extent that these terms still have meaning in a rapidly globalizing
world, Europe is a continent located in the Eastern Hemisphere but Western civi-
lization, and Asia is a continent located in the Eastern Hemisphere and Eastern
civilization.
Western Hemisphere Emphasis

Cooperation and Conflict in the Americas The Prairie Provinces
Three Incan Countries The Amazon
The Organization of American States Canada and Mexico
Eastern Hemisphere Emphasis

The Birthplace of Three Religions The World Wars
Ancient Civilizations The Holocaust
The Dark Ages and the Renaissance Collapse of the USSR
Empires and Revolutions Africa Today
Ancient Civilizations
Early Humans The Agricultural Revolution
Mesopotamia, Egypt, Kush India and China
Hebrews, Greeks, and Their Legacies The Rise and Fall of Rome
World Geography (comparative regional study)

The Five Themes of Map Projections (Mercator, Peters,
Geography Fuller, etc.)
Africa South America
Asia Oceana
Europe North America
Grade 8
The study of the United States is widespread in grade 8. The program usually stresses
the development of U.S. political institutions and consists of a series of units arranged
chronologically. A biographical approach (lots of details in Chapter 13) effectively
integrates social studies and language arts.
Natives and Colonizers: Cultures and Conquest Creating a Democracy

The Institution of Slavery A Divided Nation
Birth of an Industrial Giant Immigration
The United States and the World Globalization
15
Curriculum Standards: National,

State, and Local
You have probably noticed in this class and others that there is much talk about cur-
riculum standards. This is because there has been over the past two decades a con-
certed effort to “raise standards” in American education. As a consequence,
curriculum standards have been written by national, state, and local educational
authorities, and testing has increased dramatically—the latter to find out if the new
standards are being met. Caution is needed: The flurry of activity around standards
and testing has become like a blizzard on the Colorado plains of my childhood. It’s
difficult to see clearly in any direction. Here, briefly, is the story.
Curriculum standards are statements that describe what students need to learn.
They try to answer one of the most controversial questions of all time in every soci-
ety: What kind of people do we want our children to become? What should they
know and be able to do? Not surprisingly, people disagree over the answer to this
question, for the answer depends on what they value and how they are positioned
relative to other people. Do they value historical knowledge or only practical know-
how? Whose history and which know-how?
A number of national curriculum standards committees in a variety of subject
areas were convened across the nation in the mid-1990s. For the subject of social
studies, five sets of national standards were written. These are voluntary standards;
no state or school district is required to implement them, yet most have drawn on
them to some degree as they prepare local curriculum frameworks. But why are they
important to you? They are a rich source of ideas for planning your social studies les-
sons and units. Sometimes you will see an objective that you will want to copy di-
rectly into your plan. (Feel free to do this; they are written to be used. But remember
to credit your source.) At other times you will get terrific ideas for student learning
activities.
You can find these voluntary national standards on the Internet. At the top of
the list that follows is the best single set of standards for elementary and middle
school teachers of social studies because it draws on and integrates the other four,
which were developed for the separate disciplines of history, geography, civics/gov-
ernment, and economics.
Social Studies (Integrated)

Curriculum Standards for Social Studies. Developed by the National Council
for the Social Studies. A Sampler of these standards, revised in 2010, can
be found at this textbook’s website at www.myeducationlab.com
History
National Standards for History. Developed by the National Center for History
in the Schools, University of California, Los Angeles. (www.nchs.ucla.
edu/standards)
16
Geography
Geography for Life: National Geography Standards. Developed by the
National Council for Geographic Education, Washington, D.C. (www.
ncge.org)
Civics/Government
National Standards for Civics and Government. Developed by the Center for
Civic Education, Calabasas, CA. (www.civiced.org)
Economics
Voluntary National Standards in Economics. Developed by the Council for
Economic Education, New York. (www.councilforeconed.org)
The chapters that follow, especially Chapters 3 through 5, highlight each of these
sets of standards. And don’t forget: A Sampler of the first set, the integrated social
studies standards developed by the National Council for the Social Studies, accom-
panies this textbook at www.myeducationlab.com.
In addition to these national standards, each of the 50 states and most of the
school districts within them have curriculum standards of their own. How have state
and district curriculum standards been influenced by the various sets of national cur-
riculum standards? The answer varies. There may have been no influence at all, or a
state or district may have adopted a set of national standards wholesale. Something
in between is more likely. Most states view the national standards documents as re-
sources, with teachers and curriculum directors pondering them but not adopting
them wholesale. According to most reports, few states feel obliged to use them. (The
U.S. Constitution makes education a state-by-state project, not a national one.) As
one Texas official put it, “If there is a conflict between the Texas standards and the
national standards, this is Texas. And, by God, we would choose Texas standards.”10
Most important, however, is to find and examine the social studies standards for
your state and local school district and read them. To help make sense of what you
read, please keep in mind the preceding discussion in this chapter about curriculum
goals and scope and sequence.
Five Key Trends

A social trend is a social force. A trend has power—the power to carry you, your
thinking, beliefs, customs, and identities, in one direction or another. The dictionary
defines trend as a prevailing direction or current. Trends can be hard to see, but they
are also hard to ignore. When you step into a river, you are moved by its current and
moved not just anywhere but in a particular direction.
Unique trends are influencing teachers who are beginning their careers today.
Had you applied for a teaching position in the late 1950s, the successful launching
17
of the Soviet Union’s satellite Sputnik would have loomed over your interview with
the personnel director. He or she may have been carried by the strong current of
“beating the Russians to the moon.” You may have replaced your classroom supply
of finger paints with beakers and microscopes as so many teachers were required to
do. Had you applied to teach in 1970, the war in Vietnam and antiwar protests might
have shaped the interview. You may have been asked to take a loyalty oath—a state-
ment swearing your loyalty to the United States and its laws. You may have sewn a
peace symbol to your jeans jacket.
Of course, today’s currents are different. Teachers are being asked to take the
vision of the public school more seriously than ever before, offering high-quality edu-
cation to each child, welcoming children of all cultures, and closing the achievement
gap between White students and students of color (Trend 1 following). Teachers and
schools also are being held accountable more than before by the use of “high-stakes”
tests. This is affecting the teaching and learning of social studies, sometimes pushing
it to the sidelines of the elementary school curriculum (Trend 2). Meanwhile, global-
ization is intensifying—at once exciting, disorienting, and threatening. Accordingly,
“21st century skills” are taking on new meaning and urgency. Teachers are expected
to innovate and collaborate with one another and to teach their students to do the
same (Trend 3). At the same time, education for democratic citizenship (Trend 4) is a
current that moves us in the direction of a more vibrant and just society. Democracies
are fragile, after all, and teachers are expected to be democratic educators—stewards
of “we the people.” Finally, integrating literacy instruction with social studies instruc-
tion has long been considered a wise practice, and it is now a hot trend (5). These
trends are introduced here and revisited throughout the book. During an interview for
a teaching position, you most likely will be asked about one or more of them.
Trend 1: Closing the Achievement Gap

The public-school movement of the mid-1800s was geared to getting children into
schools at public expense (private schools for the wealthy were already well estab-
lished). That public-school movement was quite successful. But once access to schools
was extended to all our children, access to good curriculum and instruction within
them depended largely on the social class, race, and gender of the child. To some
extent, it still does.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1954 that the segregated school system was
failing to provide equal education for all children, and communities were forced to
racially integrate their schools. Yet the curriculum standards to which African
American children were held and the instructional support they received inside the
newly integrated schools sometimes were, and still are, lower than those for White
children. Today, schools are re-segregating, which is separating the urban poor from
the suburban middle class. As a result, there are what Jonathan Kozol famously called
“savage inequalities” between schools within the same metropolitan area—maybe
only a half mile apart.11
As we will see in Chapter 2, poor children are often held to lower standards,
and students of color (especially Native American, African American, and Latino
18
students) are disproportionately from poor families where there may be fewer books
in the home, less reading aloud to children, and parents with fewer years of school-
ing themselves. Moreover, middle-class children of whatever race or ethnicity do not
have access to the same curriculum and instruction that are generally available to
children from well-to-do families who attend exclusive private schools. As a result,
an achievement gap persists between White and non-White students and between stu-
dents from lower- and higher-income families.
Today’s teachers are expected to work hard to educate the diverse children of
today’s classrooms and to create more successful ways of doing so than have been
developed thus far. Access to (i.e., inclusion in) high-quality curriculum and instruc-
tion is the goal. To this end, today’s teachers are expected to know the content and
skills they are teaching—from world geography to reading-comprehension skills—as
well as instructional methods that will help children learn these things. Teachers are
also expected to acknowledge and root out their own prejudices and stereotypes—
which all of us have to some extent—and thereby to recognize the intelligence,
strengths, and talent in each child. Teachers are expected to set challenging expecta-
tions and provide a strong and supportive instructional environment for every stu-
dent. As we shall see in the next chapter, this means not only that teachers must
examine their own attitudes about race, gender, and cultural differences, but also that
they must learn about the home cultures of their students, which in some cases may
be markedly different from their own and the culture of the school.
Trend 2: Assessment, Accountability, and

the Global Achievement Gap
By 2001, there was a high-stakes testing movement in the schools. Today, many par-
ents and educators believe it has gotten out of hand. America’s public schools cur-
rently administer more than 100 million standardized exams each year. Any teacher
will tell you that the pressure is intense to raise children’s scores on these tests.
As we will see in Chapter 7, there are three main purposes of testing: (1) to
improve teaching and learning; (2) to sort and place students in special programs;
and (3) to hold schools accountable to parents and the public. Trend 2 is all about
the third purpose of assessment. But why? Why this pressure for accountability?
The pressure comes from many sources. Near the beginning of his presidency,
Barak Obama announced “Race to the Top.” In this program, states compete for fed-
eral funds that will help them reform schools in four areas:
● Adopting internationally benchmarked standards and assessments that prepare

students for success in college and the workplace
● Recruiting, developing, rewarding, and retaining effective teachers and
principals
● Building data systems that measure student success and inform teachers and
principals how they can improve their practices
● Turning around our lowest-performing schools
19
Back in 2002, President George W. Bush enacted No Child Left Behind (NCLB).
This act required all states to implement statewide accountability systems that:
● Established academic standards in each subject

● Identified strengths and weaknesses in the educational system, including
“failing schools”
These federal government efforts to get states to reform their school systems fu-
eled the testing-and-accountability frenzy we see today across the country. But it is
due also to widespread concern for the nation’s international competitiveness. Many
people worry that American students are falling behind students in other nations. As
the Partnership for 21st Century Skills puts it: “Equally important (to the achieve-
ment gap within the nation) is the global achievement gap between U.S. students—
even our top-performing students—and their international peers in competitor
nations.”12
In his influential book, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first
Century, Thomas Friedman wrote: “When I was growing up, my parents told me,
‘Finish your dinner. People in China and India are starving.’ Now, I tell my daugh-
ters, ‘Finish your homework. People in India and China are starving for your job.’”
This rhetoric reflects and at the same time fuels the anxiety that our nation will not
compete successfully in the new century because our schools don’t demand enough
of students. The same rhetoric was popular in 1958 after the Soviet Union “beat” the
United States into space travel, and then in 1983 during Japan’s economic “miracle,”
and again today as China and India soar.
As a consequence, testing time in schools has increased dramatically. Just a
decade ago, yearly testing in elementary schools may have taken only one week.
According to a third-grade teacher in California, yearly testing has now lengthened
to three weeks. “Although learning did take place during this time through the re-
view of subject matter,” she said, “the school felt like it was in ‘suspended animation’
until all tests were completed. And, teachers were encouraged to give test reviews
when students were not actually taking tests.”13
Is all the testing helping? This is hotly debated. Here’s one problem: Since NCLB
was implemented, the number of English language learners (ELLs) graduating from
high school has decreased. Why? Despite fulfilling their other graduation require-
ments, they failed one or more high-stakes tests. Is decreasing high school gradua-
tion really what we want? As we’ll see in Chapter 2, high school graduation is a major
life event that influences everything from annual income to civic participation and
tolerance for diversity. On the other hand, an African American school principal said
to me, “If it wasn’t for this testing, I wouldn’t be able to get my teachers to teach the
kids of color with the same high expectations they have for the White kids.”
Here’s a second problem: It is not only the administration of such tests that
concerns teachers—the time and energy they spend on them—but also their effect
on what is taught to children and how. Evidence shows that teachers reallocate
instructional time so as to teach to the test, and their principals often demand it.
The result is called curriculum narrowing, which is the intense focus on reading and
20
math (and now, in some places, science) to the exclusion of social studies, art, liter-
ature, and music. And it doesn’t happen equitably: Poor children in urban schools
are subjected to more curriculum narrowing than are well-off children in suburban
schools.14
Trend 3: Globalization and 21st Century Skills

Globalization is not new. Long ago, Columbus, Cortés, and the Pilgrims were key
players in globalization. But today globalization is different because it is intensi-
fying. It has multiple dimensions, some bad and some good. One kind of global-
ization is widening the rich–poor gap around the world in the name of new
markets, “free trade,” and cheap labor. A recent report warns, “Thanks to glob-
alization, driven by modern communications and other advances, workers in
virtually every sector must now face competitors who live just a mouse-click away
in Ireland, Finland, China, India, and dozens of other nations whose economies
are growing.”15 Another kind of globalization—political rather than economic—
is spreading human rights; pressure is being put on oppressive governments for
liberal reforms such as freedom of speech and religion as well as gender and racial
equality. Still another kind of globalization—information and communication
technology (ICT)—has brought us social networking, virtual “friends” and avatars,
micro-blogging, and online auctions, encyclopedias, and video games; meanwhile
airplane travel, computers, and cell-phone technology are defeating distance itself
and shrinking the world. This communications revolution is, in turn, fueling just
about everything else.
How are educators responding? One popular way is to strengthen world lan-
guage instruction in the elementary grades. In an increasing number of schools, all
children (not only the children of immigrants whose mother tongue is something
Flags of many
nations fly in the
halls of Stanford
International School
in Seattle.
(Photo courtesy of Stephen
Camicia)
21
Guests are
welcomed in many
languages at
Stanford
International
School.
(Photo courtesy of
Stephen Camicia)
other than English) are studying a second language beginning in kindergarten. In

other words, students whose mother tongue is English are increasingly expected to
learn a second language and to learn school subjects such as math and social studies
in that second language. Accordingly, elementary schools are increasingly being trans-
formed for language immersion. At Stanford International Elementary School in Seat-
tle (see the two photos), instruction is provided in English, Japanese, and Spanish
starting in kindergarten. At another elementary school across town, Beacon Hill In-
ternational Elementary School, the languages are English, Mandarin, and Spanish.
This trend is taking the monolingual, English-speaking-only portion of the U.S. stu-
dent population in a very different direction from where it has been; it is taking this
group, like many of their classmates and much of the world, toward multilingualism.
In addition to this world languages emphasis, the new school reform initiative
mentioned in Trend 2, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, is aiming for “a holistic
view of 21st century teaching and learning” that focuses on 21st century student out-
comes. Key skills and themes are:
Learning and Innovation Skills

Creativity and Innovation Skills
Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Skills
Communication and Collaboration Skills
Information, Media, and Technology Skills
Information Literacy
Media Literacy
ICT Literacy
Life and Career Skills
Flexibility and Adaptability
Initiative and Self-Direction
22
Social and Cross-Cultural Skills

Productivity and Accountability
Leadership and Responsibility
Global Awareness
Financial, Economic, Business, and Entrepreneurial Literacy
Civic Literacy
Health Literacy
Environmental Literacy
But let’s be careful not to get carried away by “21st century skills” hype. Criti-
cal thinking and problem solving, for example, or creativity and information literacy
are not new. Over two millennia ago, Plato wrote a wonderful treatise about them in
The Republic. As one wit quipped, “Perhaps at the time, these were considered ‘3rd
century BCE skills’?”16 Also, global awareness is already a central feature in the social
studies curriculum: World geography (societies near and far) and world history (hu-
manity now and then) are at its core. As we saw in the unit topics suggested earlier,
grade 1 often features families not just locally but around the world, grade 2 has
transportation and communication around the world, and grade 3 features commu-
nities around the world. Grade 4 has deserts, forests, and rivers of the world. Grades
6 and 7 are aimed squarely at learning about the world and its peoples. The trend
now is to look again at these core aspects of the social studies curriculum and
strengthen them alongside the “21st century skills.” This means, for example, that
students should study not only their own community but also, quoting the Partner-
ship’s Social Studies Skills Map, they should “access information about communities
around the world from a variety of information sources.”17
Trend 4: Democracy
The democratic ideal celebrates government “of, by, and for the people,” as Presi-
dent Lincoln said in his speech at Gettysburg, and it does not tolerate repression or
discrimination. Political scientists call this liberal democracy. If democracies are po-
litical systems in which the people govern, usually by electing representatives who
govern, then liberal democracies (as opposed to illiberal ones) add to elections some-
thing else: individual liberties and rights—such as the rights specified in the Bill of
Rights of the U.S. Constitution or the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of
Human Rights. The idea is that people can practice any religion they choose, or none,
and they have the freedoms of speech, press, association, and protest. “I disapprove
of what you say,” goes the saying attributed to Voltaire, “but I will defend to the
death your right to say it.” This is a core principle of liberal democracy.
Accordingly, democracy is much more than a political system; it is a way of life—
a way of being with one another, and not just with friends and family but also with
strangers, whether in the city hall, a faculty meeting, or the classroom. It is certainly
not a perfect path; in fact, it is frustrating, contentious, and exasperating. The only
thing worse than democracy, the saying goes, is all of the alternatives.
23
That democracies fall short of these aspirations is a plain fact, and it is the chief
motive behind social movements that struggle to close the gap between the actual and
the ideal. Thus, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., demanded in his 1963 March on
Washington address not an alternative to democracy, but its fulfillment. Standing on
the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., he said:
[W]e have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our
republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of
Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was
to fall heir. . . . We have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon
demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.18
If democracy is to be the vision that holds our diverse society together, then the
people must be educated for it. The simple truth is that there can be no democracy
without democratic citizens. This is because the people themselves, as Lincoln and
King said, create and sustain democratic governments. And these citizens don’t fall
from trees. People aren’t born already grasping basic principles of democracy, such
as liberty, equality, justice, and the separation of church and state. They aren’t born
knowing why so many democracies fail and so few last. They aren’t born able and
willing to talk with strangers about the common good. These things are not, as his-
tory makes very clear, born into our genes. Rather, they are social, moral, and intel-
lectual achievements—the products of a planned curriculum.
Teachers, therefore, need to see themselves as democracy educators, and this ed-
ucation, as we shall see in Chapter 3, should begin in kindergarten. These five-year-
olds are experiencing their first sustained emergence from the private worlds of home
and family into the public world of citizens. Research has been clear that if we ex-
pect democratic behavior from adults—tolerance of diverse religions, for example,
and knowing how to participate in government—then we must begin their demo-
cratic education in the primary grades and build from there.
Trend 5: Making the Literacy–Social

Studies Connection
Last but certainly not least, and maybe the most important of all: The newest trend in
integrated (a.k.a. interdisciplinary) education is to teach social studies through reading
and writing instruction and vice versa. Actually, talented teachers have long done pre-
cisely this. But because reading and writing achievement are now subjected to intense,
high-stakes testing, which sometimes pushes social studies instruction to the sidelines,
this wise practice is now becoming more common. Indeed, it’s a hot new trend.
Literacy researchers understand that “studying language is the foundation of all
schooling, not just of the language arts.”19 In social studies, students construct knowl-
edge of the world using language. It is not as if reading, writing, speaking, and lis-
tening can be walled off from the content areas (social studies, math, science,
literature, poetry, music, etc.); rather, these skills are the gateway to and the medium
for learning any subject. This is true both for early learning, such as learning the
24
difference between countries and continents, and for advanced learning as well, such
as understanding the difference between democratic and aristocratic countries on the
one hand and between the economies of Europe and Africa on the other.
Literacy researchers also understand that even in the earliest elementary years
“learning academic language is critical for successful literacy and academic achieve-
ment, both for monolingual English speakers and students who are English language
learners.”20 Academic language is typically disciplinary language, that is, the language
used in academic disciplines from geography to history and chemistry. It is most often
the language of textbooks, classrooms, and tests. Throughout the elementary and
middle school years, students today are exposed to a greater variety of academic gen-
res and types of texts and are increasingly expected to learn from them. Informational
texts (e.g., a textbook comparison of the Navajo and Cherokee nations) are increas-
ingly being taught and read alongside narrative texts (e.g., an illustrated trade book
that tells the life stories of Geronimo and Chief Joseph). This variety makes unique
reading comprehension demands on students, and each genre requires significant
vocabulary development. In fact, one predicts the other: Children’s vocabulary in
kindergarten (e.g., their ability to define words) predicts their reading comprehen-
sion by grade 2.21 The only national test of reading ability, the National Assessment
of Educational Progress (NAEP), regularly measures students’ reading ability on mul-
tiple kinds of text—informational, narrative, and charts, tables, and graphs.
What this means is that if teachers regard the teaching of reading and vocabu-
lary as something that is done only during the reading block using reading basals and
ignore the other subjects and their content-specific texts and vocabulary, they are
stunting the academic growth of their students—both the monolingual English speak-
ers and the ELLs. A number of instructional models developed for teaching academic
content to ELLs tightly integrate the two goals—language learning and content learn-
ing. One of the best known and successful of these models, “sheltered instruction,”
has this as its core purpose. It seeks to “make the subject matter concepts compre-
hensible while promoting students’ English language development.” 22
Because later I devote two chapters (10 and 11) to the integration of literacy and
social studies learning, let us bring this introductory chapter to an end.
Conclusion
Why is there a social studies curriculum in the schools? Social studies is at the center
of a good school curriculum because it is where students learn to see and interpret
the world—its peoples, places, cultures, systems, and problems; its dreams and
calamities—now and long ago. In social studies lessons and units of study, students
don’t simply experience the world (they always do anyway, in school and out) but
are helped systematically to understand it, to care for it, to think deeply and critically
about it, and to take their place on the public stage, standing on equal footing with
others.
25
The goals of the social studies curriculum are social understanding and civic
efficacy. Social understanding is knowledge of human beings’ social worlds. This
knowledge is drawn from the social sciences and the humanities along with students’
lives and society’s needs. Civic efficacy is the readiness and willingness to assume
citizenship responsibilities. The purpose of this introductory chapter was to examine
these goals and various scope-and-sequence plans for achieving them. I showed how
to use the 10 themes from the NCSS curriculum standards to elaborate the scope of
the social studies curriculum emphasis for any grade (i.e., any point in the sequence).
And I ended the chapter with trends that will shape the beginning years of your teach-
ing career.
Of course, teachers don’t only teach reading, writing, and the content areas; they
teach children. The children themselves are the focus of the next chapter. Although
a science textbook might take a biological approach to such a chapter, it is appropri-
ate that a social studies textbook take a demographic approach, as readers shall see.
Discussion Questions
and Suggested Activities
1. Look back at the Reflection sidebar near the “sisters.” What should they compare (food,
opening Goals section of the chapter and at your clothing, and shelter; longitude and latitude)?
response to the questions asked there. Then, with Remember to consult the Curriculum Scope
a partner reread the definition and the two goals and Sequence section of this chapter.
of social studies education given earlier and the 3. Go online to locate a copy of the social studies
explanation that follows. Work together to clar- curriculum framework for the state in which you
ify the distinction between social understanding reside or to which you want to move. How is it
and civic efficacy, and discuss the ways knowl- organized? Is the goal statement divided into
edge, values and attitudes, and skills are each knowledge, attitudes and values, and skills, as
involved. presented in this chapter? Is the curriculum scope
2. What are your “sister cities” in the world? and sequence similar to what was presented in
Called “town twinning” in Europe, the idea is to this chapter? If not, how do they differ?
pair geographically distinct communities for the
4. Lesson planning: Twenty-two model lesson plans
purpose of global understanding and fostering
are spread throughout chapters 2-12 of this
cultural links, student exchanges, pen pals, and
book. Look now at the last page of the Table of
the like. They are useful resources in elementary
Contents to see the list. With a partner, choose
social studies units because they provide mean-
any three of the plans and study them to find the
ingful comparisons to the local community. The
similarities in ways they are organized.
relationship affords opportunities for class-to-
class writing, video conferencing, collaborative 5. NCSS Standards: Read theme 1 in the social
projects, and exchanges. Visit Sister Cities Inter- studies standards Sampler that accompanies
national’s website to find out how to request a this textbook at www.myeducationlab.com and
sister city or to learn which cities are already the “snapshot” of a creative teacher at work.
paired with yours. Then sketch with a partner a What ideas do they suggest to you for your own
unit in which children at a particular grade level classroom? Record your ideas in your planning
compare their own town with two or three journal.
26
• To check your comprehension of the content covered in Chapter 1, go to the Book Resources in the
MyEducationLab for your course, select your text, and complete the Study Plan. Here you will be
able to take a chapter quiz, receive feedback on your answers, and then access review, practice, and
enrichment activities to enhance your understanding of chapter content.
• Also in the Book Resources section you may view the sample standards and vignettes from the new
NCSS Curriculum Standards by selecting NCSS Sampler.
• You may also access a variety of topically organized Assignments and Activities in MyEducationLab
for this book.
Selected References
Brophy, Jere, & Janet Alleman. (2010). What do children will determine our future. New York: Teachers
know about cultural universals? In Walter C. Parker College Press.
(Ed.), Social studies today: Research and practice Levstik, Linda, & Tyson, Cynthia A. (Eds.). (2008).
(pp. 133–140). New York: Routledge. Handbook of research on social studies education.
Evans, Ronald W. (2010). The social studies wars: Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Now and then. In Walter C. Parker (Ed.), Social Parker, Walter C. (2008). International education—
Studies Today: Research and Practice (pp. 25–34). What’s in a name? Phi Delta Kappan, 90(2),
New York: Routledge. 196–202.
Grant, S. G. (2010). “High-stakes testing: How are Parker, Walter C. (Ed.) (2010). Social studies today:
social studies teachers responding?” In Social Research and practice. New York: Routledge.
studies today: Research and practice (pp. 53–64). Zhao, Yong. (2009). Catching up or leading the way:
New York: Routledge. American education in the age of globalization.
Darling-Hammond, Linda (2010). The flat world and Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and
education: How America's commitment to equity Curriculum Development.
27
Notes
1. National Council for the Social Studies, Expectations 13. Claudia Meek, “Classroom Crisis: It’s About Time,”
of Excellence: Curriculum Standards for Social Studies Phi Delta Kappan, 84 (8) (April 2003), 593.
(Washington, DC: Author, 1994), 54–55. 14. Center on Education Policy, NCLB: Narrowing the
2. Ibid., 3. Curriculum? (Washington, DC: Author, 2005). A more
3. Some scholars classify history along with the humani- complicated picture is presented by Peter Levine et al.
ties rather than the social sciences because history has in Getting Narrower at the Base: The American
so much in common with literature. This makes some Curriculum After NCLB (Medford, MA: Center
sense. But I prefer to place it with the social sciences for Information & Research on Civic Learning and
for two reasons: Its method of inquiry emphasizes Engagement, 2008).
argument and evidence, and historians search for the 15. National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Med-
truth of the matter as opposed to only trying to tell a icine, Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing
“good story” (see Chapter 4). and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future
4. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from Birmingham (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2005), 1.
Jail.” In Why We Can’t Wait, 76-95 (New York: 16. Andrew J. Rotherham, and Daniel Willingham, “21st
Mentor, 1963), 77. Century Skills,” Educational Leadership, 67 (2009),
5. E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Cultural Literacy: What Every Amer- 16–21.
ican Needs to Know (New York: Vintage, 1988). 17. Partnership for 21st Century Skills & the National
6. “Overview,” Partnership for 21st Century Skills Council for the Social Studies, 21st Century Skills Map
(www.21stcenturyskills.org, accessed October 1, (Tucson, AZ: authors, 2008), 8.
2010). 18. Martin Luther King, Jr., “I Have a Dream.” In A Call
7. National Council for the Social Studies, Social Studies to Conscience: The Landmark Speeches of Dr. Martin
Curriculum Planning Resources (Dubuque, IA: Luther King, Jr., ed. Clayborne Carson and Kris Shep-
Kendall/Hunt, 1990), 25–29. ard, 81-87 (New York: Time Warner, 2001), 81.
8. Jerome Bruner, On Knowing: Essays for the Left Hand 19. Joint Task Force on Assessment, Standards for the
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966), Assessment of Reading and Writing (Newark, DE:
107. See also the spiral curriculum in Hilda Taba International Reading Association & National Council
et al., A Teacher’s Handbook to Elementary Social of Teachers of English, 2010), 6.
Studies: An Inductive Approach (Reading, MA: 20. Nell K. Duke and Joanne F. Carlisle, “The Develop-
Addison-Wesley, 1971). ment of Comprehension.” In Handbook of Reading
9. Herbert J. Walberg and Shiow-Ling Tsai, “Matthew Research, ed. Michael L. Kamil, P. David Pearson,
Effects in Education,” Educational Research Elizabeth B. Moje and Peter Afflerback, 199-228
Quarterly, 20 (1983), 359–373. (New York: Routledge, 2011), 207.
10. Lynn Olson, “Standards Times 50,” Education Week, 21. Ibid.
special report (April 12, 1995), 15. 22. Jana Echevarria, Mary Ellen Vogt, and Deborah
11. Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities (New York: J. Short, Making Content Comprehensible for Elemen-
HarperPerennial, 1992). tary English Learners: The SIOP Model (Boston:
12. Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 21st Century Allyn & Bacon, 2010).
Skills: Education and Competitiveness (Tucson, AZ:
author, 2008), 12. Also, Tony Wagner, The Global
Achievement Gap (New York: Basic Books, 2008).
28
Chapter 2
Teaching Diverse Children
From Chapter 2 of Social Studies in Elementary Education, 14/e. Walter C. Parker.

Copyright © 2012 by Pearson Education. All rights reserved.
29
Teaching Diverse Children
Chapter Outline
1. Guidelines for Teaching 2. Understanding Diverse 3. Multiple Intelligences
in Diverse Classrooms Classrooms 4. Conclusion
Key Concepts
● Diversity ● Culturally responsive ● Language and
● Demography instruction dialect
● Cultural deficit model ● Race ● Gender
● Cultural difference model ● Social class ● Sexual orientation
● Individualized ● Ethnicity ● Gifts and challenges
instruction ● Culture ● Multiple intelligences
● Differentiated ● Religion
instruction
P I C T U R E T H I S
Each spring, the students in Ginny Simpson’s fourth-grade class conduct the “Citizenship
Simulation.” They simulate the ceremony at which people who have immigrated to the
United States become citizens of this country. One child, playing
the mayor, gives a welcome speech. Another, playing a federal
judge, asks everyone a few questions from the citizenship test:
“What is the Constitution?” “Who is eligible to vote?” “Who lived
in America before Europeans arrived?” Then the citizens-to-be
take the Oath of Allegiance, followed by the Pledge of Alle-
giance. Afterward, there is a party with congratulatory speeches
and songs.
Myrleen Pearson/Alamy
30
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DANCE ON STILTS AT THE GIRLS’ UNYAGO, NIUCHI
Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least

the Newala of to-day does; there was once another Newala in a lovely
valley at the foot of the plateau. I visited it and found scarcely a trace
of houses, only a Christian cemetery, with the graves of several
missionaries and their converts, remaining as a monument of its
former glories. But the surroundings are wonderfully beautiful. A
thick grove of splendid mango-trees closes in the weather-worn
crosses and headstones; behind them, combining the useful and the
agreeable, is a whole plantation of lemon-trees covered with ripe
fruit; not the small African kind, but a much larger and also juicier
imported variety, which drops into the hands of the passing traveller,
without calling for any exertion on his part. Old Newala is now under
the jurisdiction of the native pastor, Daudi, at Chingulungulu, who,
as I am on very friendly terms with him, allows me, as a matter of
course, the use of this lemon-grove during my stay at Newala.
FEET MUTILATED BY THE RAVAGES OF THE “JIGGER”
(Sarcopsylla penetrans)
The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,

some 1,600 feet lower down. The way is not only long and fatiguing,
but the water, when we get it, is thoroughly bad. We are suffering not
only from this, but from the fact that the arrangements at Newala are
nothing short of luxurious. We have a separate kitchen—a hut built
against the boma palisade on the right of the baraza, the interior of
which is not visible from our usual position. Our two cooks were not
long in finding this out, and they consequently do—or rather neglect
to do—what they please. In any case they do not seem to be very
particular about the boiling of our drinking-water—at least I can
attribute to no other cause certain attacks of a dysenteric nature,
from which both Knudsen and I have suffered for some time. If a
man like Omari has to be left unwatched for a moment, he is capable
of anything. Besides this complaint, we are inconvenienced by the
state of our nails, which have become as hard as glass, and crack on
the slightest provocation, and I have the additional infliction of
pimples all over me. As if all this were not enough, we have also, for
the last week been waging war against the jigger, who has found his
Eldorado in the hot sand of the Makonde plateau. Our men are seen
all day long—whenever their chronic colds and the dysentery likewise
raging among them permit—occupied in removing this scourge of
Africa from their feet and trying to prevent the disastrous
consequences of its presence. It is quite common to see natives of
this place with one or two toes missing; many have lost all their toes,
or even the whole front part of the foot, so that a well-formed leg
ends in a shapeless stump. These ravages are caused by the female of
Sarcopsylla penetrans, which bores its way under the skin and there
develops an egg-sac the size of a pea. In all books on the subject, it is
stated that one’s attention is called to the presence of this parasite by
an intolerable itching. This agrees very well with my experience, so
far as the softer parts of the sole, the spaces between and under the
toes, and the side of the foot are concerned, but if the creature
penetrates through the harder parts of the heel or ball of the foot, it
may escape even the most careful search till it has reached maturity.
Then there is no time to be lost, if the horrible ulceration, of which
we see cases by the dozen every day, is to be prevented. It is much
easier, by the way, to discover the insect on the white skin of a
European than on that of a native, on which the dark speck scarcely
shows. The four or five jiggers which, in spite of the fact that I
constantly wore high laced boots, chose my feet to settle in, were
taken out for me by the all-accomplished Knudsen, after which I
thought it advisable to wash out the cavities with corrosive
sublimate. The natives have a different sort of disinfectant—they fill
the hole with scraped roots. In a tiny Makua village on the slope of
the plateau south of Newala, we saw an old woman who had filled all
the spaces under her toe-nails with powdered roots by way of
prophylactic treatment. What will be the result, if any, who can say?
The rest of the many trifling ills which trouble our existence are
really more comic than serious. In the absence of anything else to
smoke, Knudsen and I at last opened a box of cigars procured from
the Indian store-keeper at Lindi, and tried them, with the most
distressing results. Whether they contain opium or some other
narcotic, neither of us can say, but after the tenth puff we were both
“off,” three-quarters stupefied and unspeakably wretched. Slowly we
recovered—and what happened next? Half-an-hour later we were
once more smoking these poisonous concoctions—so insatiable is the
craving for tobacco in the tropics.
Even my present attacks of fever scarcely deserve to be taken
seriously. I have had no less than three here at Newala, all of which
have run their course in an incredibly short time. In the early
afternoon, I am busy with my old natives, asking questions and
making notes. The strong midday coffee has stimulated my spirits to
an extraordinary degree, the brain is active and vigorous, and work
progresses rapidly, while a pleasant warmth pervades the whole
body. Suddenly this gives place to a violent chill, forcing me to put on
my overcoat, though it is only half-past three and the afternoon sun
is at its hottest. Now the brain no longer works with such acuteness
and logical precision; more especially does it fail me in trying to
establish the syntax of the difficult Makua language on which I have
ventured, as if I had not enough to do without it. Under the
circumstances it seems advisable to take my temperature, and I do
so, to save trouble, without leaving my seat, and while going on with
my work. On examination, I find it to be 101·48°. My tutors are
abruptly dismissed and my bed set up in the baraza; a few minutes
later I am in it and treating myself internally with hot water and
lemon-juice.
Three hours later, the thermometer marks nearly 104°, and I make
them carry me back into the tent, bed and all, as I am now perspiring
heavily, and exposure to the cold wind just beginning to blow might
mean a fatal chill. I lie still for a little while, and then find, to my
great relief, that the temperature is not rising, but rather falling. This
is about 7.30 p.m. At 8 p.m. I find, to my unbounded astonishment,
that it has fallen below 98·6°, and I feel perfectly well. I read for an
hour or two, and could very well enjoy a smoke, if I had the
wherewithal—Indian cigars being out of the question.
Having no medical training, I am at a loss to account for this state
of things. It is impossible that these transitory attacks of high fever
should be malarial; it seems more probable that they are due to a
kind of sunstroke. On consulting my note-book, I become more and
more inclined to think this is the case, for these attacks regularly
follow extreme fatigue and long exposure to strong sunshine. They at
least have the advantage of being only short interruptions to my
work, as on the following morning I am always quite fresh and fit.
My treasure of a cook is suffering from an enormous hydrocele which
makes it difficult for him to get up, and Moritz is obliged to keep in
the dark on account of his inflamed eyes. Knudsen’s cook, a raw boy
from somewhere in the bush, knows still less of cooking than Omari;
consequently Nils Knudsen himself has been promoted to the vacant
post. Finding that we had come to the end of our supplies, he began
by sending to Chingulungulu for the four sucking-pigs which we had
bought from Matola and temporarily left in his charge; and when
they came up, neatly packed in a large crate, he callously slaughtered
the biggest of them. The first joint we were thoughtless enough to
entrust for roasting to Knudsen’s mshenzi cook, and it was
consequently uneatable; but we made the rest of the animal into a
jelly which we ate with great relish after weeks of underfeeding,
consuming incredible helpings of it at both midday and evening
meals. The only drawback is a certain want of variety in the tinned
vegetables. Dr. Jäger, to whom the Geographical Commission
entrusted the provisioning of the expeditions—mine as well as his
own—because he had more time on his hands than the rest of us,
seems to have laid in a huge stock of Teltow turnips,[46] an article of
food which is all very well for occasional use, but which quickly palls
when set before one every day; and we seem to have no other tins
left. There is no help for it—we must put up with the turnips; but I
am certain that, once I am home again, I shall not touch them for ten
years to come.
Amid all these minor evils, which, after all, go to make up the
genuine flavour of Africa, there is at least one cheering touch:
Knudsen has, with the dexterity of a skilled mechanic, repaired my 9
× 12 cm. camera, at least so far that I can use it with a little care.
How, in the absence of finger-nails, he was able to accomplish such a
ticklish piece of work, having no tool but a clumsy screw-driver for
taking to pieces and putting together again the complicated
mechanism of the instantaneous shutter, is still a mystery to me; but
he did it successfully. The loss of his finger-nails shows him in a light
contrasting curiously enough with the intelligence evinced by the
above operation; though, after all, it is scarcely surprising after his
ten years’ residence in the bush. One day, at Lindi, he had occasion
to wash a dog, which must have been in need of very thorough
cleansing, for the bottle handed to our friend for the purpose had an
extremely strong smell. Having performed his task in the most
conscientious manner, he perceived with some surprise that the dog
did not appear much the better for it, and was further surprised by
finding his own nails ulcerating away in the course of the next few
days. “How was I to know that carbolic acid has to be diluted?” he
mutters indignantly, from time to time, with a troubled gaze at his
mutilated finger-tips.
Since we came to Newala we have been making excursions in all
directions through the surrounding country, in accordance with old
habit, and also because the akida Sefu did not get together the tribal
elders from whom I wanted information so speedily as he had
promised. There is, however, no harm done, as, even if seen only
from the outside, the country and people are interesting enough.
The Makonde plateau is like a large rectangular table rounded off
at the corners. Measured from the Indian Ocean to Newala, it is
about seventy-five miles long, and between the Rovuma and the
Lukuledi it averages fifty miles in breadth, so that its superficial area
is about two-thirds of that of the kingdom of Saxony. The surface,
however, is not level, but uniformly inclined from its south-western
edge to the ocean. From the upper edge, on which Newala lies, the
eye ranges for many miles east and north-east, without encountering
any obstacle, over the Makonde bush. It is a green sea, from which
here and there thick clouds of smoke rise, to show that it, too, is
inhabited by men who carry on their tillage like so many other
primitive peoples, by cutting down and burning the bush, and
manuring with the ashes. Even in the radiant light of a tropical day
such a fire is a grand sight.
Much less effective is the impression produced just now by the
great western plain as seen from the edge of the plateau. As often as
time permits, I stroll along this edge, sometimes in one direction,
sometimes in another, in the hope of finding the air clear enough to
let me enjoy the view; but I have always been disappointed.
Wherever one looks, clouds of smoke rise from the burning bush,
and the air is full of smoke and vapour. It is a pity, for under more
favourable circumstances the panorama of the whole country up to
the distant Majeje hills must be truly magnificent. It is of little use
taking photographs now, and an outline sketch gives a very poor idea
of the scenery. In one of these excursions I went out of my way to
make a personal attempt on the Makonde bush. The present edge of
the plateau is the result of a far-reaching process of destruction
through erosion and denudation. The Makonde strata are
everywhere cut into by ravines, which, though short, are hundreds of
yards in depth. In consequence of the loose stratification of these
beds, not only are the walls of these ravines nearly vertical, but their
upper end is closed by an equally steep escarpment, so that the
western edge of the Makonde plateau is hemmed in by a series of
deep, basin-like valleys. In order to get from one side of such a ravine
to the other, I cut my way through the bush with a dozen of my men.
It was a very open part, with more grass than scrub, but even so the
short stretch of less than two hundred yards was very hard work; at
the end of it the men’s calicoes were in rags and they themselves
bleeding from hundreds of scratches, while even our strong khaki
suits had not escaped scatheless.
NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR

MAHUTA
I see increasing reason to believe that the view formed some time
back as to the origin of the Makonde bush is the correct one. I have
no doubt that it is not a natural product, but the result of human
occupation. Those parts of the high country where man—as a very
slight amount of practice enables the eye to perceive at once—has not
yet penetrated with axe and hoe, are still occupied by a splendid
timber forest quite able to sustain a comparison with our mixed
forests in Germany. But wherever man has once built his hut or tilled
his field, this horrible bush springs up. Every phase of this process
may be seen in the course of a couple of hours’ walk along the main
road. From the bush to right or left, one hears the sound of the axe—
not from one spot only, but from several directions at once. A few
steps further on, we can see what is taking place. The brush has been
cut down and piled up in heaps to the height of a yard or more,
between which the trunks of the large trees stand up like the last
pillars of a magnificent ruined building. These, too, present a
melancholy spectacle: the destructive Makonde have ringed them—
cut a broad strip of bark all round to ensure their dying off—and also
piled up pyramids of brush round them. Father and son, mother and
son-in-law, are chopping away perseveringly in the background—too
busy, almost, to look round at the white stranger, who usually excites
so much interest. If you pass by the same place a week later, the piles
of brushwood have disappeared and a thick layer of ashes has taken
the place of the green forest. The large trees stretch their
smouldering trunks and branches in dumb accusation to heaven—if
they have not already fallen and been more or less reduced to ashes,
perhaps only showing as a white stripe on the dark ground.
This work of destruction is carried out by the Makonde alike on the
virgin forest and on the bush which has sprung up on sites already
cultivated and deserted. In the second case they are saved the trouble
of burning the large trees, these being entirely absent in the
secondary bush.
After burning this piece of forest ground and loosening it with the
hoe, the native sows his corn and plants his vegetables. All over the
country, he goes in for bed-culture, which requires, and, in fact,
receives, the most careful attention. Weeds are nowhere tolerated in
the south of German East Africa. The crops may fail on the plains,
where droughts are frequent, but never on the plateau with its
abundant rains and heavy dews. Its fortunate inhabitants even have
the satisfaction of seeing the proud Wayao and Wamakua working
for them as labourers, driven by hunger to serve where they were
accustomed to rule.
But the light, sandy soil is soon exhausted, and would yield no
harvest the second year if cultivated twice running. This fact has
been familiar to the native for ages; consequently he provides in
time, and, while his crop is growing, prepares the next plot with axe
and firebrand. Next year he plants this with his various crops and
lets the first piece lie fallow. For a short time it remains waste and
desolate; then nature steps in to repair the destruction wrought by
man; a thousand new growths spring out of the exhausted soil, and
even the old stumps put forth fresh shoots. Next year the new growth
is up to one’s knees, and in a few years more it is that terrible,
impenetrable bush, which maintains its position till the black
occupier of the land has made the round of all the available sites and
come back to his starting point.
The Makonde are, body and soul, so to speak, one with this bush.
According to my Yao informants, indeed, their name means nothing
else but “bush people.” Their own tradition says that they have been
settled up here for a very long time, but to my surprise they laid great
stress on an original immigration. Their old homes were in the
south-east, near Mikindani and the mouth of the Rovuma, whence
their peaceful forefathers were driven by the continual raids of the
Sakalavas from Madagascar and the warlike Shirazis[47] of the coast,
to take refuge on the almost inaccessible plateau. I have studied
African ethnology for twenty years, but the fact that changes of
population in this apparently quiet and peaceable corner of the earth
could have been occasioned by outside enterprises taking place on
the high seas, was completely new to me. It is, no doubt, however,
correct.
The charming tribal legend of the Makonde—besides informing us
of other interesting matters—explains why they have to live in the
thickest of the bush and a long way from the edge of the plateau,
instead of making their permanent homes beside the purling brooks
and springs of the low country.
“The place where the tribe originated is Mahuta, on the southern
side of the plateau towards the Rovuma, where of old time there was
nothing but thick bush. Out of this bush came a man who never
washed himself or shaved his head, and who ate and drank but little.
He went out and made a human figure from the wood of a tree
growing in the open country, which he took home to his abode in the
bush and there set it upright. In the night this image came to life and
was a woman. The man and woman went down together to the
Rovuma to wash themselves. Here the woman gave birth to a still-
born child. They left that place and passed over the high land into the
valley of the Mbemkuru, where the woman had another child, which
was also born dead. Then they returned to the high bush country of
Mahuta, where the third child was born, which lived and grew up. In
course of time, the couple had many more children, and called
themselves Wamatanda. These were the ancestral stock of the
Makonde, also called Wamakonde,[48] i.e., aborigines. Their
forefather, the man from the bush, gave his children the command to
bury their dead upright, in memory of the mother of their race who
was cut out of wood and awoke to life when standing upright. He also
warned them against settling in the valleys and near large streams,
for sickness and death dwelt there. They were to make it a rule to
have their huts at least an hour’s walk from the nearest watering-
place; then their children would thrive and escape illness.”
The explanation of the name Makonde given by my informants is
somewhat different from that contained in the above legend, which I
extract from a little book (small, but packed with information), by
Pater Adams, entitled Lindi und sein Hinterland. Otherwise, my
results agree exactly with the statements of the legend. Washing?
Hapana—there is no such thing. Why should they do so? As it is, the
supply of water scarcely suffices for cooking and drinking; other
people do not wash, so why should the Makonde distinguish himself
by such needless eccentricity? As for shaving the head, the short,
woolly crop scarcely needs it,[49] so the second ancestral precept is
likewise easy enough to follow. Beyond this, however, there is
nothing ridiculous in the ancestor’s advice. I have obtained from
various local artists a fairly large number of figures carved in wood,
ranging from fifteen to twenty-three inches in height, and
representing women belonging to the great group of the Mavia,
Makonde, and Matambwe tribes. The carving is remarkably well
done and renders the female type with great accuracy, especially the
keloid ornamentation, to be described later on. As to the object and
meaning of their works the sculptors either could or (more probably)
would tell me nothing, and I was forced to content myself with the
scanty information vouchsafed by one man, who said that the figures
were merely intended to represent the nembo—the artificial
deformations of pelele, ear-discs, and keloids. The legend recorded
by Pater Adams places these figures in a new light. They must surely
be more than mere dolls; and we may even venture to assume that
they are—though the majority of present-day Makonde are probably
unaware of the fact—representations of the tribal ancestress.
The references in the legend to the descent from Mahuta to the
Rovuma, and to a journey across the highlands into the Mbekuru
valley, undoubtedly indicate the previous history of the tribe, the
travels of the ancestral pair typifying the migrations of their
descendants. The descent to the neighbouring Rovuma valley, with
its extraordinary fertility and great abundance of game, is intelligible
at a glance—but the crossing of the Lukuledi depression, the ascent
to the Rondo Plateau and the descent to the Mbemkuru, also lie
within the bounds of probability, for all these districts have exactly
the same character as the extreme south. Now, however, comes a
point of especial interest for our bacteriological age. The primitive
Makonde did not enjoy their lives in the marshy river-valleys.
Disease raged among them, and many died. It was only after they
had returned to their original home near Mahuta, that the health
conditions of these people improved. We are very apt to think of the
African as a stupid person whose ignorance of nature is only equalled
by his fear of it, and who looks on all mishaps as caused by evil
spirits and malignant natural powers. It is much more correct to
assume in this case that the people very early learnt to distinguish
districts infested with malaria from those where it is absent.
This knowledge is crystallized in the
ancestral warning against settling in the
valleys and near the great waters, the
dwelling-places of disease and death. At the
same time, for security against the hostile
Mavia south of the Rovuma, it was enacted
that every settlement must be not less than a
certain distance from the southern edge of the
plateau. Such in fact is their mode of life at the
present day. It is not such a bad one, and
certainly they are both safer and more
comfortable than the Makua, the recent
intruders from the south, who have made USUAL METHOD OF
good their footing on the western edge of the CLOSING HUT-DOOR
plateau, extending over a fairly wide belt of
country. Neither Makua nor Makonde show in their dwellings
anything of the size and comeliness of the Yao houses in the plain,
especially at Masasi, Chingulungulu and Zuza’s. Jumbe Chauro, a
Makonde hamlet not far from Newala, on the road to Mahuta, is the
most important settlement of the tribe I have yet seen, and has fairly
spacious huts. But how slovenly is their construction compared with
the palatial residences of the elephant-hunters living in the plain.
The roofs are still more untidy than in the general run of huts during
the dry season, the walls show here and there the scanty beginnings
or the lamentable remains of the mud plastering, and the interior is a
veritable dog-kennel; dirt, dust and disorder everywhere. A few huts
only show any attempt at division into rooms, and this consists
merely of very roughly-made bamboo partitions. In one point alone
have I noticed any indication of progress—in the method of fastening
the door. Houses all over the south are secured in a simple but
ingenious manner. The door consists of a set of stout pieces of wood
or bamboo, tied with bark-string to two cross-pieces, and moving in
two grooves round one of the door-posts, so as to open inwards. If
the owner wishes to leave home, he takes two logs as thick as a man’s
upper arm and about a yard long. One of these is placed obliquely
against the middle of the door from the inside, so as to form an angle
of from 60° to 75° with the ground. He then places the second piece
horizontally across the first, pressing it downward with all his might.
It is kept in place by two strong posts planted in the ground a few
inches inside the door. This fastening is absolutely safe, but of course
cannot be applied to both doors at once, otherwise how could the
owner leave or enter his house? I have not yet succeeded in finding
out how the back door is fastened.
MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO

This is the general way of closing a house. The Makonde at Jumbe
Chauro, however, have a much more complicated, solid and original
one. Here, too, the door is as already described, except that there is
only one post on the inside, standing by itself about six inches from
one side of the doorway. Opposite this post is a hole in the wall just
large enough to admit a man’s arm. The door is closed inside by a
large wooden bolt passing through a hole in this post and pressing
with its free end against the door. The other end has three holes into
which fit three pegs running in vertical grooves inside the post. The
door is opened with a wooden key about a foot long, somewhat
curved and sloped off at the butt; the other end has three pegs
corresponding to the holes, in the bolt, so that, when it is thrust
through the hole in the wall and inserted into the rectangular
opening in the post, the pegs can be lifted and the bolt drawn out.[50]
MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY
With no small pride first one householder and then a second

showed me on the spot the action of this greatest invention of the
Makonde Highlands. To both with an admiring exclamation of
“Vizuri sana!” (“Very fine!”). I expressed the wish to take back these
marvels with me to Ulaya, to show the Wazungu what clever fellows
the Makonde are. Scarcely five minutes after my return to camp at
Newala, the two men came up sweating under the weight of two
heavy logs which they laid down at my feet, handing over at the same
time the keys of the fallen fortress. Arguing, logically enough, that if
the key was wanted, the lock would be wanted with it, they had taken
their axes and chopped down the posts—as it never occurred to them
to dig them out of the ground and so bring them intact. Thus I have
two badly damaged specimens, and the owners, instead of praise,
come in for a blowing-up.
The Makua huts in the environs of Newala are especially
miserable; their more than slovenly construction reminds one of the
temporary erections of the Makua at Hatia’s, though the people here
have not been concerned in a war. It must therefore be due to
congenital idleness, or else to the absence of a powerful chief. Even
the baraza at Mlipa’s, a short hour’s walk south-east of Newala,
shares in this general neglect. While public buildings in this country
are usually looked after more or less carefully, this is in evident
danger of being blown over by the first strong easterly gale. The only
attractive object in this whole district is the grave of the late chief
Mlipa. I visited it in the morning, while the sun was still trying with
partial success to break through the rolling mists, and the circular
grove of tall euphorbias, which, with a broken pot, is all that marks
the old king’s resting-place, impressed one with a touch of pathos.
Even my very materially-minded carriers seemed to feel something
of the sort, for instead of their usual ribald songs, they chanted
solemnly, as we marched on through the dense green of the Makonde
bush:—
“We shall arrive with the great master; we stand in a row and have
no fear about getting our food and our money from the Serkali (the
Government). We are not afraid; we are going along with the great
master, the lion; we are going down to the coast and back.”
With regard to the characteristic features of the various tribes here
on the western edge of the plateau, I can arrive at no other
conclusion than the one already come to in the plain, viz., that it is
impossible for anyone but a trained anthropologist to assign any
given individual at once to his proper tribe. In fact, I think that even
an anthropological specialist, after the most careful examination,
might find it a difficult task to decide. The whole congeries of peoples
collected in the region bounded on the west by the great Central
African rift, Tanganyika and Nyasa, and on the east by the Indian
Ocean, are closely related to each other—some of their languages are
only distinguished from one another as dialects of the same speech,
and no doubt all the tribes present the same shape of skull and
structure of skeleton. Thus, surely, there can be no very striking
differences in outward appearance.
Even did such exist, I should have no time
to concern myself with them, for day after day,
I have to see or hear, as the case may be—in
any case to grasp and record—an
extraordinary number of ethnographic
phenomena. I am almost disposed to think it
fortunate that some departments of inquiry, at
least, are barred by external circumstances.
Chief among these is the subject of iron-
working. We are apt to think of Africa as a
country where iron ore is everywhere, so to
speak, to be picked up by the roadside, and
where it would be quite surprising if the
inhabitants had not learnt to smelt the
material ready to their hand. In fact, the
knowledge of this art ranges all over the
continent, from the Kabyles in the north to the
Kafirs in the south. Here between the Rovuma
and the Lukuledi the conditions are not so
favourable. According to the statements of the
Makonde, neither ironstone nor any other
form of iron ore is known to them. They have
not therefore advanced to the art of smelting
the metal, but have hitherto bought all their
THE ANCESTRESS OF
THE MAKONDE
iron implements from neighbouring tribes.
Even in the plain the inhabitants are not much
better off. Only one man now living is said to
understand the art of smelting iron. This old fundi lives close to
Huwe, that isolated, steep-sided block of granite which rises out of
the green solitude between Masasi and Chingulungulu, and whose
jagged and splintered top meets the traveller’s eye everywhere. While
still at Masasi I wished to see this man at work, but was told that,
frightened by the rising, he had retired across the Rovuma, though
he would soon return. All subsequent inquiries as to whether the
fundi had come back met with the genuine African answer, “Bado”
(“Not yet”).
BRAZIER
Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I

came across in the bush near Akundonde’s. This man is the favourite
of women, and therefore no doubt of the gods; he welds the glittering
brass rods purchased at the coast into those massive, heavy rings
which, on the wrists and ankles of the local fair ones, continually give
me fresh food for admiration. Like every decent master-craftsman he
had all his tools with him, consisting of a pair of bellows, three
crucibles and a hammer—nothing more, apparently. He was quite
willing to show his skill, and in a twinkling had fixed his bellows on
the ground. They are simply two goat-skins, taken off whole, the four
legs being closed by knots, while the upper opening, intended to
admit the air, is kept stretched by two pieces of wood. At the lower
end of the skin a smaller opening is left into which a wooden tube is
stuck. The fundi has quickly borrowed a heap of wood-embers from
the nearest hut; he then fixes the free ends of the two tubes into an
earthen pipe, and clamps them to the ground by means of a bent
piece of wood. Now he fills one of his small clay crucibles, the dross
on which shows that they have been long in use, with the yellow
material, places it in the midst of the embers, which, at present are
only faintly glimmering, and begins his work. In quick alternation
the smith’s two hands move up and down with the open ends of the
bellows; as he raises his hand he holds the slit wide open, so as to let
the air enter the skin bag unhindered. In pressing it down he closes
the bag, and the air puffs through the bamboo tube and clay pipe into
the fire, which quickly burns up. The smith, however, does not keep
on with this work, but beckons to another man, who relieves him at
the bellows, while he takes some more tools out of a large skin pouch
carried on his back. I look on in wonder as, with a smooth round
stick about the thickness of a finger, he bores a few vertical holes into
the clean sand of the soil. This should not be difficult, yet the man
seems to be taking great pains over it. Then he fastens down to the
ground, with a couple of wooden clamps, a neat little trough made by
splitting a joint of bamboo in half, so that the ends are closed by the
two knots. At last the yellow metal has attained the right consistency,
and the fundi lifts the crucible from the fire by means of two sticks
split at the end to serve as tongs. A short swift turn to the left—a
tilting of the crucible—and the molten brass, hissing and giving forth
clouds of smoke, flows first into the bamboo mould and then into the
holes in the ground.
The technique of this backwoods craftsman may not be very far
advanced, but it cannot be denied that he knows how to obtain an
adequate result by the simplest means. The ladies of highest rank in
this country—that is to say, those who can afford it, wear two kinds
of these massive brass rings, one cylindrical, the other semicircular
in section. The latter are cast in the most ingenious way in the
bamboo mould, the former in the circular hole in the sand. It is quite
a simple matter for the fundi to fit these bars to the limbs of his fair
customers; with a few light strokes of his hammer he bends the
pliable brass round arm or ankle without further inconvenience to
the wearer.
SHAPING THE POT
SMOOTHING WITH MAIZE-COB
CUTTING THE EDGE

FINISHING THE BOTTOM
LAST SMOOTHING BEFORE

BURNING
FIRING THE BRUSH-PILE

LIGHTING THE FARTHER SIDE OF
THE PILE
TURNING THE RED-HOT VESSEL
NYASA WOMAN MAKING POTS AT MASASI

Pottery is an art which must always and everywhere excite the
interest of the student, just because it is so intimately connected with
the development of human culture, and because its relics are one of
the principal factors in the reconstruction of our own condition in
prehistoric times. I shall always remember with pleasure the two or
three afternoons at Masasi when Salim Matola’s mother, a slightly-
built, graceful, pleasant-looking woman, explained to me with
touching patience, by means of concrete illustrations, the ceramic art
of her people. The only implements for this primitive process were a
lump of clay in her left hand, and in the right a calabash containing
the following valuables: the fragment of a maize-cob stripped of all
its grains, a smooth, oval pebble, about the size of a pigeon’s egg, a
few chips of gourd-shell, a bamboo splinter about the length of one’s
hand, a small shell, and a bunch of some herb resembling spinach.
Nothing more. The woman scraped with the
shell a round, shallow hole in the soft, fine
sand of the soil, and, when an active young
girl had filled the calabash with water for her,
she began to knead the clay. As if by magic it
gradually assumed the shape of a rough but
already well-shaped vessel, which only wanted
a little touching up with the instruments
before mentioned. I looked out with the
MAKUA WOMAN closest attention for any indication of the use
MAKING A POT. of the potter’s wheel, in however rudimentary
SHOWS THE a form, but no—hapana (there is none). The
BEGINNINGS OF THE embryo pot stood firmly in its little
POTTER’S WHEEL
depression, and the woman walked round it in
a stooping posture, whether she was removing
small stones or similar foreign bodies with the maize-cob, smoothing
the inner or outer surface with the splinter of bamboo, or later, after
letting it dry for a day, pricking in the ornamentation with a pointed
bit of gourd-shell, or working out the bottom, or cutting the edge
with a sharp bamboo knife, or giving the last touches to the finished
vessel. This occupation of the women is infinitely toilsome, but it is
without doubt an accurate reproduction of the process in use among
our ancestors of the Neolithic and Bronze ages.
There is no doubt that the invention of pottery, an item in human
progress whose importance cannot be over-estimated, is due to
women. Rough, coarse and unfeeling, the men of the horde range
over the countryside. When the united cunning of the hunters has
succeeded in killing the game; not one of them thinks of carrying
home the spoil. A bright fire, kindled by a vigorous wielding of the
drill, is crackling beside them; the animal has been cleaned and cut
up secundum artem, and, after a slight singeing, will soon disappear
under their sharp teeth; no one all this time giving a single thought
to wife or child.
To what shifts, on the other hand, the primitive wife, and still more
the primitive mother, was put! Not even prehistoric stomachs could
endure an unvarying diet of raw food. Something or other suggested
the beneficial effect of hot water on the majority of approved but
indigestible dishes. Perhaps a neighbour had tried holding the hard
roots or tubers over the fire in a calabash filled with water—or maybe
an ostrich-egg-shell, or a hastily improvised vessel of bark. They
became much softer and more palatable than they had previously
been; but, unfortunately, the vessel could not stand the fire and got
charred on the outside. That can be remedied, thought our
ancestress, and plastered a layer of wet clay round a similar vessel.
This is an improvement; the cooking utensil remains uninjured, but
the heat of the fire has shrunk it, so that it is loose in its shell. The
next step is to detach it, so, with a firm grip and a jerk, shell and
kernel are separated, and pottery is invented. Perhaps, however, the
discovery which led to an intelligent use of the burnt-clay shell, was
made in a slightly different way. Ostrich-eggs and calabashes are not
to be found in every part of the world, but everywhere mankind has
arrived at the art of making baskets out of pliant materials, such as
bark, bast, strips of palm-leaf, supple twigs, etc. Our inventor has no
water-tight vessel provided by nature. “Never mind, let us line the
basket with clay.” This answers the purpose, but alas! the basket gets
burnt over the blazing fire, the woman watches the process of
cooking with increasing uneasiness, fearing a leak, but no leak
appears. The food, done to a turn, is eaten with peculiar relish; and
the cooking-vessel is examined, half in curiosity, half in satisfaction
at the result. The plastic clay is now hard as stone, and at the same
time looks exceedingly well, for the neat plaiting of the burnt basket
is traced all over it in a pretty pattern. Thus, simultaneously with
pottery, its ornamentation was invented.
Primitive woman has another claim to respect. It was the man,
roving abroad, who invented the art of producing fire at will, but the
woman, unable to imitate him in this, has been a Vestal from the
earliest times. Nothing gives so much trouble as the keeping alight of
the smouldering brand, and, above all, when all the men are absent
from the camp. Heavy rain-clouds gather, already the first large
drops are falling, the first gusts of the storm rage over the plain. The
little flame, a greater anxiety to the woman than her own children,
flickers unsteadily in the blast. What is to be done? A sudden thought
occurs to her, and in an instant she has constructed a primitive hut
out of strips of bark, to protect the flame against rain and wind.
This, or something very like it, was the way in which the principle
of the house was discovered; and even the most hardened misogynist
cannot fairly refuse a woman the credit of it. The protection of the
hearth-fire from the weather is the germ from which the human
dwelling was evolved. Men had little, if any share, in this forward
step, and that only at a late stage. Even at the present day, the
plastering of the housewall with clay and the manufacture of pottery
are exclusively the women’s business. These are two very significant
survivals. Our European kitchen-garden, too, is originally a woman’s
invention, and the hoe, the primitive instrument of agriculture, is,
characteristically enough, still used in this department. But the
noblest achievement which we owe to the other sex is unquestionably
the art of cookery. Roasting alone—the oldest process—is one for
which men took the hint (a very obvious one) from nature. It must
have been suggested by the scorched carcase of some animal
overtaken by the destructive forest-fires. But boiling—the process of
improving organic substances by the help of water heated to boiling-
point—is a much later discovery. It is so recent that it has not even
yet penetrated to all parts of the world. The Polynesians understand
how to steam food, that is, to cook it, neatly wrapped in leaves, in a
hole in the earth between hot stones, the air being excluded, and
(sometimes) a few drops of water sprinkled on the stones; but they
do not understand boiling.
To come back from this digression, we find that the slender Nyasa
woman has, after once more carefully examining the finished pot,
put it aside in the shade to dry. On the following day she sends me
word by her son, Salim Matola, who is always on hand, that she is
going to do the burning, and, on coming out of my house, I find her
already hard at work. She has spread on the ground a layer of very
dry sticks, about as thick as one’s thumb, has laid the pot (now of a
yellowish-grey colour) on them, and is piling brushwood round it.
My faithful Pesa mbili, the mnyampara, who has been standing by,
most obligingly, with a lighted stick, now hands it to her. Both of
them, blowing steadily, light the pile on the lee side, and, when the
flame begins to catch, on the weather side also. Soon the whole is in a
blaze, but the dry fuel is quickly consumed and the fire dies down, so
that we see the red-hot vessel rising from the ashes. The woman
turns it continually with a long stick, sometimes one way and
sometimes another, so that it may be evenly heated all over. In
twenty minutes she rolls it out of the ash-heap, takes up the bundle
of spinach, which has been lying for two days in a jar of water, and
sprinkles the red-hot clay with it. The places where the drops fall are
marked by black spots on the uniform reddish-brown surface. With a
sigh of relief, and with visible satisfaction, the woman rises to an
erect position; she is standing just in a line between me and the fire,
from which a cloud of smoke is just rising: I press the ball of my
camera, the shutter clicks—the apotheosis is achieved! Like a
priestess, representative of her inventive sex, the graceful woman
stands: at her feet the hearth-fire she has given us beside her the
invention she has devised for us, in the background the home she has
built for us.
At Newala, also, I have had the manufacture of pottery carried on
in my presence. Technically the process is better than that already
described, for here we find the beginnings of the potter’s wheel,
which does not seem to exist in the plains; at least I have seen
nothing of the sort. The artist, a frightfully stupid Makua woman, did
not make a depression in the ground to receive the pot she was about
to shape, but used instead a large potsherd. Otherwise, she went to
work in much the same way as Salim’s mother, except that she saved
herself the trouble of walking round and round her work by squatting
at her ease and letting the pot and potsherd rotate round her; this is
surely the first step towards a machine. But it does not follow that
the pot was improved by the process. It is true that it was beautifully
rounded and presented a very creditable appearance when finished,
but the numerous large and small vessels which I have seen, and, in
part, collected, in the “less advanced” districts, are no less so. We
moderns imagine that instruments of precision are necessary to
produce excellent results. Go to the prehistoric collections of our
museums and look at the pots, urns and bowls of our ancestors in the
dim ages of the past, and you will at once perceive your error.
MAKING LONGITUDINAL CUT IN
BARK
DRAWING THE BARK OFF THE LOG
REMOVING THE OUTER BARK

BEATING THE BARK
WORKING THE BARK-CLOTH AFTER BEATING, TO MAKE IT

SOFT
MANUFACTURE OF BARK-CLOTH AT NEWALA

To-day, nearly the whole population of German East Africa is
clothed in imported calico. This was not always the case; even now in
some parts of the north dressed skins are still the prevailing wear,
and in the north-western districts—east and north of Lake
Tanganyika—lies a zone where bark-cloth has not yet been
superseded. Probably not many generations have passed since such
bark fabrics and kilts of skins were the only clothing even in the
south. Even to-day, large quantities of this bright-red or drab
material are still to be found; but if we wish to see it, we must look in
the granaries and on the drying stages inside the native huts, where
it serves less ambitious uses as wrappings for those seeds and fruits
which require to be packed with special care. The salt produced at
Masasi, too, is packed for transport to a distance in large sheets of
bark-cloth. Wherever I found it in any degree possible, I studied the
process of making this cloth. The native requisitioned for the
purpose arrived, carrying a log between two and three yards long and
as thick as his thigh, and nothing else except a curiously-shaped
mallet and the usual long, sharp and pointed knife which all men and
boys wear in a belt at their backs without a sheath—horribile dictu!
[51]
Silently he squats down before me, and with two rapid cuts has
drawn a couple of circles round the log some two yards apart, and
slits the bark lengthwise between them with the point of his knife.
With evident care, he then scrapes off the outer rind all round the
log, so that in a quarter of an hour the inner red layer of the bark
shows up brightly-coloured between the two untouched ends. With
some trouble and much caution, he now loosens the bark at one end,
and opens the cylinder. He then stands up, takes hold of the free
edge with both hands, and turning it inside out, slowly but steadily
pulls it off in one piece. Now comes the troublesome work of
scraping all superfluous particles of outer bark from the outside of
the long, narrow piece of material, while the inner side is carefully
scrutinised for defective spots. At last it is ready for beating. Having
signalled to a friend, who immediately places a bowl of water beside
him, the artificer damps his sheet of bark all over, seizes his mallet,
lays one end of the stuff on the smoothest spot of the log, and
hammers away slowly but continuously. “Very simple!” I think to
myself. “Why, I could do that, too!”—but I am forced to change my
opinions a little later on; for the beating is quite an art, if the fabric is
not to be beaten to pieces. To prevent the breaking of the fibres, the
stuff is several times folded across, so as to interpose several
thicknesses between the mallet and the block. At last the required
state is reached, and the fundi seizes the sheet, still folded, by both
ends, and wrings it out, or calls an assistant to take one end while he
holds the other. The cloth produced in this way is not nearly so fine
and uniform in texture as the famous Uganda bark-cloth, but it is
quite soft, and, above all, cheap.
Now, too, I examine the mallet. My craftsman has been using the
simpler but better form of this implement, a conical block of some
hard wood, its base—the striking surface—being scored across and
across with more or less deeply-cut grooves, and the handle stuck
into a hole in the middle. The other and earlier form of mallet is
shaped in the same way, but the head is fastened by an ingenious
network of bark strips into the split bamboo serving as a handle. The
observation so often made, that ancient customs persist longest in
connection with religious ceremonies and in the life of children, here
finds confirmation. As we shall soon see, bark-cloth is still worn
during the unyago,[52] having been prepared with special solemn
ceremonies; and many a mother, if she has no other garment handy,
will still put her little one into a kilt of bark-cloth, which, after all,
looks better, besides being more in keeping with its African
surroundings, than the ridiculous bit of print from Ulaya.
MAKUA WOMEN

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Social Studies in Elementary Education

14th Edition, (Ebook PDF)

M A I N I D E A The purpose of social studies education is to help

W hen I was in elementary school in Englewood, Colorado, just south of Denver,

Goals for Social Studies: Social

Please take a minute now to look at A Sampler of Curriculum Standards for

A third way to answer the “Which knowledge is most important?” question is

● Great river systems of the world

Attitudes and Values

I. Democratic Participation Skills

As you will see later in this chapter, there is today a

Curriculum Scope and Sequence

the local community. Rather, a compare-and-contrast approach should be used, for

Kindergarten—Awareness of Self in a Social Setting

A powerful sequencing principle is the “spiral” curriculum. As the brilliant psy-

Figure 1.1 Spiral curriculum.

Worldwide examples grade 6

National examples grade 5

State examples grade 4

Local examples grade 3

Clothing Government Landform

GRADE 3 SHARING EARTH-SPACE WITH OTHERS: COMMUNITIES

Unit Topics by Grade Level

Rules for Safe Living Our Earth

Comparing Holidays Food, Clothing, and Shelter (cultural universals)

Rural and Urban Communities Community Workers

History and People of the Home State

The American Land The Institution of Slavery

Western Hemisphere Emphasis

Eastern Hemisphere Emphasis

World Geography (comparative regional study)

Natives and Colonizers: Cultures and Conquest Creating a Democracy

Curriculum Standards: National,

Social Studies (Integrated)

Five Key Trends

Trend 1: Closing the Achievement Gap

Trend 2: Assessment, Accountability, and

● Adopting internationally benchmarked standards and assessments that prepare

● Established academic standards in each subject

Trend 3: Globalization and 21st Century Skills

other than English) are studying a second language beginning in kindergarten. In

Learning and Innovation Skills

Social and Cross-Cultural Skills

Trend 5: Making the Literacy–Social

From Chapter 2 of Social Studies in Elementary Education, 14/e. Walter C. Parker.

Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least

The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,

NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR

MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO

MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY

With no small pride first one householder and then a second

Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I

SMOOTHING WITH MAIZE-COB

CUTTING THE EDGE

LAST SMOOTHING BEFORE

FIRING THE BRUSH-PILE

TURNING THE RED-HOT VESSEL

NYASA WOMAN MAKING POTS AT MASASI

DRAWING THE BARK OFF THE LOG

REMOVING THE OUTER BARK

WORKING THE BARK-CLOTH AFTER BEATING, TO MAKE IT

MANUFACTURE OF BARK-CLOTH AT NEWALA

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