America's founding documents--the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights--are icons of human liberty. But the ideals enshrined in those documents did not initially apply to all Americans. They were, in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., "a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir."…

How something begins can matter a lot, especially for young adults. "The circumstances under which a person enters a profession is predictive of how that person will view the profession for the rest of his or her life." The goal is for that view to be positive and long lasting for social studies educators. Can more be done to support…

Fairy tales--indeed all tales--are told for a purpose. They are a form of social education, a form that some scholars argue is older than civilization itself. They imagine dilemmas and offer a range of permissible solutions, labeling socially acceptable and unacceptable behavior, demarcating good and evil, exploring existential questions, binding…

Social studies emerged at the core of the American common school in the mid-nineteenth century amid the rise of the urban immigrant receiving center. These two forces together resulted in the heightened importance of schools in transforming immigrant students into American citizens. Today, U.S. schools often serve as a social and educational nexus…

In "Proposed National Standards for Financial Literacy: What's In? What's Out?", Maier, Figart, and Nelson pose the question: "How should educators use the standards?" In answering that question, they suggest a number of issues and topics that they believe should be taught along with the "National Standards for…

This position statement is aimed at informing the general public, the K-12 community, and all educators, from pre-kindergarten through graduate school, about the importance of addressing study about religions in the social studies curriculum in ways that are constitutionally and academically sound. National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS)…

When the Texas state legislature passed a law in the 1970s allowing school districts to deny enrollment or charge tuition to illegal immigrant children, the Tyler Independent School District instituted a $1,000 tuition rate for illegal immigrant children. Sixteen undocumented children from four Mexican families in Tyler filed a class-action suit…

Introducing students to continental currency may well encourage their interest in the economic context of the Constitution and their understanding of a wide range of economic concepts. This brief article describes a lesson to familiarize students with continental currency and its relationship to Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution and the…

The College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards calls upon social studies teachers to enhance the rigor of civics, economics, geography, history and the other social studies disciplines while building the critical thinking, problem solving, and participatory skills of students to help them become actively…

For almost three quarters of a century, advocates have worked to give comparable federal stature to September 17, the day on which we celebrate the anniversary of the 1787 signing of the U.S. Constitution by the nation's founders. As President John F. Kennedy noted in his 1961 Constitution Day proclamation, it is a day for…

Political participation is seriously unequal. For example, young adults who finish college vote at almost three times the rate of contemporaries who have dropped out of high school. That gap translates into disparities by race and class. Effective civic education can reduce such inequality and make our democracy more representative. Teaching…

NCSS Executive Director Susan Griffin was chair of the Task Force of Professional Organizations that worked with the Social Studies Assessment, Curriculum, and Instruction Collaborative (SSACI) of the Council of Chief State School Officers to initiate and guide the development of the "College, Career and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social…

On September 17, 2013 (Constitution Day), the C3 Framework was released under the title "The College, Career and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards: Guidance for Enhancing the Rigor of K-12 Civics, Economics, Geography, and History." The C3 Project Director and lead writer was NCSS member Kathy Swan, who is…

The introduction of standards-based instruction ushered in a movement to clearly articulate the academic outcomes for students across the curriculum. State departments of education and local school districts across the nation have invested tremendous resources to define what students "need to know and be able to do" in English Language…

Upon entering the social studies hallway in any middle or high school in the United States, you are likely to hear the sounds of a film or video emanating from at least one classroom. Though often perceived as a medium for low-level intellectual work, recent research has documented an increasing array of authentic and rigorous pedagogy with films.…