This paper discusses how social studies can best prepare enlightened citizens for the 21st century by centering the curriculum around ethics. The first part of the paper traces the history of the social studies from the Colonial period, when no uniformity existed in scope, sequences, and materials, up to the present period, in which there is ambivalence between the demand for certainty and the need for individual freedom. In the second section the author states four assumptions intended to serve as discussion organizers and criteria for establishing new directions in social studies. The four assumptions are that curriculum developers and users (1) should understand that the school and society represent countervailing forces and the resulting tension should be represented in the curriculum; (2) should be sensitive to the needs of the world today, to the enduring values of the human family, and to the human imagination focused on the future; (3) should be sensitive to the epistemological base which characterizes and defines course content used in the classroom; and (4) should include classroom/community discourse as a part of the curriculum. The third part of the paper focuses on implications of these assumptions for social education, which are that the instructional program must include intellectual, practical, and ethical considerations. The concluding section discusses new directions for social studies, centered around ethics. (NE)