In this article, the authors show how oceanography can enlighten and energize the teaching of middle- and high-school social studies on a grade-by-grade basis, and they describe "hooks" from oceanography that will heighten students' interest in various social studies topics. They base the article on their own experiences--as a university-level geography professor who teaches oceanography and world regional geography and as a middle- and high-school social studies teacher who is pursuing a Ph.D. in geography education. They focus on factors associated with the changing role of geography in U.S. schools. They review the professional literature to determine the amount of cross-over between oceanography and social studies and use the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) from the Texas Education Agency (2001), which is similar in many respects to other state standards, as a means to analyze social studies instruction and learning objectives on a grade-by-grade basis. They provide examples from each grade's curriculum to show how oceanography can enliven and complement instruction. They also show how such an approach can help students understand that local problems are often a part of larger world problems and how an understanding of science can help them better understand social science issues, such as environmental problems, which may be local or global in scale. (Contains 4 figures and 4 tables.)