| I recently took part in an online meeting with other state history teachers of the year. In that meeting, Stefanie Wager, past president of the National Council for the Social Studies, made a presentation about the marginalization of Social Studies. She began with her son's question (below) when he realized that history was not being taught in his class.  |  |
Wager also picked up a grade book (above) at Target and realized that it mentioned everything about school, but disregarded Social Studies and History altogether. It was nice to see that other people share my concern that History, Civics, Social and so-called "Soft" Skills are largely disregarded in our nation's classrooms these days, but while the camaraderie of like-minded people is nice, the concern is real. The graphic below highlights this issue, especially at the elementary level.
The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History (GLI), the non-profit responsible for the History Teacher of the Year Award, manager of a collection of over 60,000 Gilder Lehrman documents and artifacts, advocates for more Social Studies engagement in K-5 classrooms. As one of the newest Master Teachers on the GLI team, I hope to be a part of helping that happen.
