To Dance With the Devil, or to Dance Alone

So my school just had a 2 and a half hour faculty meeting on Wednesday, to go over the School Improvement Plan prior to the visit of the accreditation committee. What a waste of time and effort, and once again, Social Studies is nowher to be found in the plan. Why? Because it is not tested. And that leads to a sort of Sophie's Choice: do Social Studies educators push for inclusion of the field on the standardized tests, or do we take comfort in the fact that we are not on the test, and thus able to cover what we want, how we want, when we want, the way we want---but also neglected when considering curriculum development and resources.

The National Council of the Social Studies has developed a number of themes or 'strands' that it suggests as the foundation of a strong curriculum. Few of them are actually testable, and they emphasize broad, critically evaluative, and general themes. That does not even consider if we test the field as 'Social Studies,' or we break it down into specific subject areas (History, Geography, Government, etc.). Again, what standards do we test? Hell, we couldn't even agree on just what standards to create for History in the 1990's!!!

I want more attention, more resources, more recognition of the importance of the Social Studies in developing future citizens. I fear that we will need testing to get it done.