worthy, sympathetic, helpful members of society. And the teachers of history, civics, economics, and sociology are among the agents whom the public has designated to do this work. But it is clear that this work does not easily confine itself to the straight and narrow path of a conventionalized training in citizenship. It must have more latitude. The social sciences, as a matter of fact, relate to all the objectives set down by the Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education, such as health, vocation, ethical character, worthy home membership, or the use of leisure. Can one realize these objectives without at the same time realizing the ends of citizenship? Indeed, the training for citizenship implies, in its broadest sense, to use the words of Secretary Hughes, "an adequate knowledge of our institutions, of their development and actual working. It means adequate knowledge of other peoples. . . not. . . a superficial review, but the earnest endeavor to understand the life of peoples, their problems, and aspirations."5 A recent questionnaire of the North Central Association of Secondary Schools, intended to determine the extent of citizenship training in the secondary schools of the association, spoke of good citizenship as resulting from: 1, altruistic emotions (interest and desires); 2, correct mental notions (knowledge and ideals); 3, trained habits of response (spontaneous and studied actions). Citizenship, in other words, is a derived good. But if these are the factors responsible for the final product, they are not noticeably different from what the schools regularly resort to to achieve the ends of education.

It is evident from the foregoing that citizenship, taken by

and standards of general education, thus giving to those that start amid the direst necessities and with the most slender advantages, a chance to rise. This is of especial importance to our working people, who are not to be viewed as mere economic units, but as our co-laborers in the great enterprise of human progress. The American ideal-and it must be maintained if we are to mitigate disappointment and unrest-is the ideal of equal educational opportunity, not merely for the purpose of enabling one to know how to earn a living, and to fit into an economic status more or less fixed, but of giving play to talent and aspiration and to the development of mental and spiritual powers."

5 Journal of the N. E. A., Sept. 1922, p. 258.

6 School Review, Vol. 28, p. 265.

itself, does not imply any specific standards. There is no fixed meaning that always and by force of logical necessity attaches to that term. Citizenship may mean one thing to one school system, and something else to another. Citizenship of the right sort relates to the set of human characteristics and behavior that make the individual a valued member of the larger community, and hence, if understood at all, must needs be understood in terms of all those basic values that secondary education seeks to attain. No matter how devotedly one seeks to inculcate civic virtue, that, without the ability to handle matter of fact situations, without the ability to reason, to think logically and discriminatingly in terms of the problems and institutions of the day, is largely work gone to waste. The individual, with respect to society, under such circumstances does not possess the necessary powers of response, no more than the muscles of the hand subject to deterioration of the nerve fibre. One may seriously question, therefore, whether a program of social studies presumably centered about citizenship as the predominating aim, is yielding as much to the community as it can be made to yield.

It is this much needed emphasis that makes Professor Dewey's criticisms of especial pertinence to the social field. He tells us, in one of his most recent articles, that "our schooling does not educate, if by education be meant a habit of discriminating inquiry and discriminating belief." It may be that Professor Dewey's charge is not fully warranted, but it is helpful in calling attention to the fact that, without the ability to think clearly, to weigh evidence, to discriminate between good and evil, to apply one's mind to the understanding of the weighty and complex problems of our time, no formal educational discipline is worth the cost.

With respect to curricular developments in the social sciences, we find the unmistakable tendency to depart from secondary school practice in vogue for more than two decades, since the days of the report of the Committee of Seven. The

7 New Republic, October 4, 1922, p. 140.

last half dozen years have seen one report after another come to light, and though these fail frequently to correspond in more than one important detail, they all betoken such new outlook, attitude and purpose, as to make inevitable a departure from the conventionalized methods of the past. And when one realizes that the demand for a new program of social studies has come from such bodies as the N. E. A. Commission on Reorganization of Secondary Education, the Committee on History and Education for Citizenship (a joint committee of the American Historical Association and the National Board of Historical Service), the American Sociological Society, the Collegiate Schools of Business, the American Economic Association, the National Association of Secondary School Principals, it is clear that the forces behind the new movement represent a weight of opinion that is all but irresistible, and that a new orientation of the social studies in the curricula of the secondary schools is something that school administrators and teachers must prepare to reckon with.

There is likewise the marked tendency to regard the social studies program as the nucleus of the entire structure of secondary school curricular organization. Thus, the Committee of the National Association of Secondary School Principals, reporting February, 1920, declared with admirable explicitness: 'It should, we believe, be asserted that the social studies, including economics, sociology, and civic topics, drawn from present day life, should be given a place in every student's curriculum in every year in the junior and senior high school.

What we are trying to bring about is a recognition of the social studies as the major train or thread of studies, others finding relation to them as possible."s This, and the recommendation that the time given to the social studies amount to one-half unit a year, each year, from the seventh through the twelfth, received the unanimous approval of the National Association of Secondary School Principals. The

8 School Review, Vol. 28, p. 295.

9 Historical Outlook, March 1922, p. 80.

report of the Commission of the Association of the Collegiate Schools of Business does not suffer in comparison. We read in this report: "The Commission believes that the social studies should be the backbone of secondary education, with which all other studies and school activities should be clearly articulated according to their contribution to the social objectives of education. . . . The social studies should be represented in each grade of education, and every pupil should have at least one unit of social study in every year of the school course."10 As this, apparently, was intended to apply to the junior high schools, the report, on another page, goes on to say: "It is assumed that in each year of the senior high school, some social study work will be required."11 Likewise, the N. E. A. Subcommittee on Social Studies in Secondary Education and the Committee on History and Education for Citizenship present a call for a consecutive required program of social studies in the two cycles of the junior and senior high schools.

It is important to note, however, that this accentuation or the social studies makes more urgent the need for a new examination and specification of subject matter and purpose. We should know as definitely as possible the contribution of each one of the social studies to the objectives of secondary education. "The contribution offered by the advocates of government has never been definitely and concisely stated," says Professor Edgar Dawson, "neither has that of economics, or of geography or of sociology;"12 and Professor Tryon makes mention, perhaps not incorrectly, "of the present chaotic condition of the whole group of social studies in the elementary and high schools."13 A recent examination of seven text books in civics in most common use in secondary schools has demonstrated "that the various texts are highly divergent in their

10 Journal of Political Economy, February, 1922, p. 43.

11 Ibid, p. 51.

12 Historical Outlook, Feb. 1922, p. 49.

13 Historical Outlook, March, 1922, p. 82.

tendencies," and that "the new subject is in no sense of the word standardized."14 Criticism of this sort applies with more pertinence to such subjects as sociology, economics, ethics, and political science, because, as Profesor Tryon states, due to their extreme youth, "their exact content has until recently been an uncertain quantity even for colleges."15 To introduce them into the secondary grades, under altogether untried conditions, implies a compelling need for careful definition and organization of subject matter, a need which educators cannot afford to ignore.

This naturally raises the question of history. In the new orientation of the social studies, what shall be the place of history? If history, as a distinct study, is not to be banished, then how many years of history shall we have? what kind of history for each grade? how relate it to other subjects in the social science program to insure necessary unity? How shall this history be taught? If we are to have "a unified body of material made up from the entire field of social studies," as so many voices are now clamoring for, then how create this new content? What criteria shall we employ for the exclusion or inclusion of material, and for the grading of such material for every level of secondary school work from the seventh year through the twelfth? There is room here for endless confusion, and unless teachers are critical and circumspect, for the palming off on pupils of ill-considered and botchy work.

Indeed, criticisms even now, are none too rare, and from whatsoever source they come, reveal the same sense of uncertainty, the feeling that we are as yet wandering in the wilderness. Thus one important commission tells us concerning community civics in the ninth grade, provided for in the report of the N. E. A. Sub-committee on Social Studies, that, "In particular there is a haphazard and inadequate presentation of economic interests in the content of community civ

14 School Review, Vol. 28, p. 290.

15 Historical Outlook, March 1922, p. 78.