History

    Horace Mann is often referred to as the father of public education. He is also referred to as the father of civic education based on his beliefs that all people living in America, immigrants and citizens alike, should be required to learn the civic information necessary to be active and contributing members of democratic society. In order to accomplish this goal, effective social studies education is necessary within the public elementary school system (Checkley, 2008). The term value is associated with cultural ideas, beliefs, and expectations regarding how American citizens are expected to interact with society. The fact that America was built on democratic ideals suggests that the American public elementary school system must embrace those values by teaching them to students. However, the opposite is true in an era of high stakes testing. Schools are placing more emphasis on math and science so that students are able to be successful on high stakes testing and social studies curriculum is suffering (Checkley, 2008). In this way, the social studies curriculum must change in order to teach students the values that American society is built upon so that students can emerge from the public school system ready and able to contribute to a democratic society (Checkley, 2008). In order to reach this goal, social studies teachers must rely on reflective teaching, goals, and long term goals in order to successfully and adequately provide an effective social studies education.

    Reflective teaching is an important part of any curriculum but is particularly important at the social studies level. Reflective teaching refers to the idea that teachers must reflect on personal experiences and beliefs in order to improve the educational outcome of students (Zeichner  Liston, 1996). However, it is also important to consider that in order to effectively teach social studies, teachers must have the right kinds of reflections so they are able to successfully demonstrate the important of social studies to elementary school students (Zeichner  Liston, 1996). In other words, effective social studies teachers are able to reflect on the values of society so they can relay those values to elementary students in the hopes that these students will learn what it means to be a good citizen as well as how to display proper civic responsibility.

    Setting goals, including long term goals, is an essential component of effective social studies instruction. Effective social studies teachers are able to plan short term and daily lesson plans built on long term goals that identify what students need to learn and how they are going to ensure that this happens (Zevin, 2000). The first goal in the twenty-first century is to ensure that social studies instruction does not get left behind (Zevin, 2000). This is a long term goal based on the lack of attention that social studies receive in many public school curriculums. Therefore, teachers must incorporate social studies and civic education into daily lesson plans even if they do not specifically focus on social studies concepts. This takes a great deal of long term planning to ensure that state and national standards continue to be met despite the increased attention placed on math and science (Checkley, 2008).

    Both goals and long term goals must also focus on current national and state standards that dictate to teachers what they must teach elementary students. There are a variety of different instructional methods that social studies teachers use, including role playing and simulation games that teach civic concepts to students (Zevin, 2000). Teachers must capitalize on these different instructional strategies so that elementary students are exposed to a sufficient amount of social studies curriculum. Therefore, making a yearly plan that focuses on long term goals so that teachers are able to include all lessons they are required to. This yearly plan can be broken down into weekly and daily goals so that each day one aspect of the social studies curriculum is covered. However, goals and long term goals are not possible without the ability for social studies teachers to reflect on what values they must pass to students (Zevin, 2000). Therefore, the focus must be placed back on social studies so that Horace Manns vision can become reality.