Social Studies in the High Schools to Meet the Changing Social Order

Author

Mabel Motte Barnwell, Prairie View State Normal and Industrial College

Date of Award

8-1936

Document Type

Undergraduate Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science

Degree Discipline

Education

Abstract

The public schools of a dynamic society are charged with the difficult responsibilities of serving a conscious agent for social improvement. Satisfactory assumption of this responsibility requires that the public schools proceed in such a manner that two major objectives will be accomplished. The first of these is that of making it possible for each boy and girl to acquire an understanding of the present social order,its complexities,its problems,its hope,and its memories.

The second in that of making it possible for each boy and girl to achieve the maximum of his or her potential ability to contribute to and live in a better social order. To this end it is imperative that each individual acquire adequate skill with the necessary fundamentals.

There are certain standards which society expects its mature individuals to attain. It expects that its citizens will learn various modes of living and become acquainted with accepted standards of behavior,that they will gather a sufficient fund of knowledge and habits to help them solve life's problems and they will have a more sympathetic understanding of other peoples and their problems. Therefore the big objective of the social studies is to bring about an adjustment of human personalities and the making of better citizens.

To neglect the development is to neglect the most important phase of education. The forms of learning that should be encouraged are those that lead on the intellectual side to generalizations. On the habit side to the cultivation of useful skills,on the aide of attitudes and appreciation to the recognition of those relationships which are permanently satisfying.

Education must abandon the practice long obsolete in science of relying upon easily found traditional values as guides in the educative process. The school of today has a much larger part of the educational load to carry than did the traditional little red schoolhouse of many years ago. Social changes have imposed larger demands on children together with waning educational possibilities in their life outside. It is as Dewey says,"Radical conditions which have changed and only an equally radical change in education will suffice".The social studies are characteristic of the modern school.

Committee Chair/Advisor

G. W. Reeves

Publisher

Prairie View State Normal and Industrial College

Rights

Date of Digitization

8-3-2021

Contributing Institution

John B Coleman Library

City of Publication

Prairie View

MIME Type

Application/PDF

Recommended Citation

Barnwell, M. M. (1936). Social Studies in the High Schools to Meet the Changing Social Order. Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.pvamu.edu/pvamu-theses/185