Few educational debates have been as sustained and acrimonious as whether school curriculum should emphasize history or social studies. This article argues that school history has largely shared social and individual goals with social studies, while the latter has relied on history as central to learning about the present. Although the article concludes that social studies may be better than history alone at achieving the goals to which both subjects adhere, what really seems to be in dispute is two different ways of organizing the curriculum. That is, whether scholarly bodies of historical knowledge and methods or the concerns of society and youth should be the starting point for formulating programs in "social study." Contemporary disputes about the relative worth of the study of history versus social studies often hinge on whether it is assumed curriculum making should begin with academic subjects or as a search through them for material relevant to goals that may not inhere in the academic subjects themselves. Although the study of history can result in perfectly defensible instructional arrangements, the author suggests that whatever subject matter embraced should first pass a Deweyan test of its relevance to "the direct interests of life."