Ross, E. Wayne (Ed.). (1997). The Social Studies Curriculum: Purposes, Problems, and Possibilities. Reviewed by Margaret Smith Crocco & Stephen J. Thornton

Ross, E. Wayne (Ed.). (1997). The Social Studies Curriculum: Purposes, Problems, and Possibilities. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. 274 pp. ISBN 0-7914-3443-5 Reviewed by Margaret Smith Crocco & Stephen J. Thornton Teachers College, Columbia University February 12, 1999           There is no question that anthologies are valuable as class texts as well as providing non-specialists with a succinct update on a given field of study. Nevertheless, reviewing anthologies is more difficult than reviewing monographs because appropriate criteria for evaluation are far from self-evident: Is it the editor's success in assembling a collection of chapters that illuminate a common theme? Or should we look for the same type of illumination around various sub-themes that, taken together, provide an overview of a field? Or should we simply judge the anthology on the basis of its individual components? How such questions are answered can lead to contrasting reviews of the same anthology.           Our review incorporates elements of all three aforementioned approaches, but with an emphasis on the first. In other words, in an era when an anthology devoted to the contemporary state of the social studies curriculum as a whole faces no current competitors of which we are aware, we asked "What does this anthology tell us about the contemporary state of the social studies?"           The editor, Wayne Ross, states that the audience for this volume includes preservice as well as inservice teachers, curriculum workers, administrators, and lay readers. In one paragraph found early on in the Introduction, he notes a variety of purposes for the anthology: "a substantive overview of the issues in curriculum development and implementation faced by social studies educators," an emphasis on concerns for diversity of purposes and forms of knowledge within the social studies curriculum," and a "systematic investigation of a broad range of issues affecting the curriculum" (p. xii).           Although these purposes are related, they are not identical. Reading this volume left us with a sense that the various contributors were working with few, if any, common conceptions of what the anthology is about. Ironically, as will be discussed below, Ross'ss own opening chapter is the most successful in identifying a workable, though rather ambitious, scope for the anthology. But it appears that the other contributors either failed to read Ross's chapter or, at least, did not heed its scope to inform their own writing.           The Social Studies Curriculum is divided into three sections: Purposes (3 chapters), Social Issues (4 chapters), and Practice (6 chapters). Ross's introductory chapter emphasizes "The Struggle for the Social Studies Curriculum," followed by Michael Whelan's argument for History as the Core of Social Studies Education," and David Warren Saxe's essay on "The Unique Mission of the Social Studies."           In general, Ross provides a useful, succinct, and even-handed set of answers to the three questions that frame his chapter: 1) what is the social studies curriculum? 2) who controls it? and 3) what is the teacher's role in relation to the curriculum? In answering his first question, Ross reviews both the origins of the social studies in the schools and the continuing debate over the nature and meaning of citizenship education. Clearly Ross sees the contemporary landscape of social studies education reflecting many of the same tensions that have characterized the field from its origins earlier in this century, especially the conflict between a discipline-centered approach and an interdisciplinary study of contemporary social problems geared toward citizenship education. Although the chapters by Whelan and Saxe provide somewhat contrapuntal answers to Ross's question on the nature of the social studies curriculum, we wish that they said more about Ross's other excellent questions: who controls the social studies curriculum? what is the teacher's role in relation to the curriculum? The last question, particularly, might have received more explicit and elaborated treatment throughout this anthology.           Indeed, Ross acknowledges one of the central dilemmas of this anthology in his chapter when he states that "Curricular issues cannot be usefully discussed or analyzed apart from teachers' pedagogical practices" (p. 9). He follows this assertion with an important, although somewhat brief, discussion of the varied meanings of curriculum, making a key distinction between the formal and enacted curriculum. Unfortunately, little concrete acknowledgment of this crucial distinction is made in other chapters. Had greater attention been given in each of the chapters to the enacted curriculum, for example, this would naturally have led to more systematic treatment throughout the volume of teachers, students, and their relation to the social studies curriculum. Oddly enough, social studies teachers are nearly invisible in this book; only Gloria Ladson-Billings and Terrie Epstein in Part III ("Practice") provide any extended treatment of teachers. At a time when many reform efforts in education are aimed at breaking down the wall of separation between universities and schools, it seems surprising that so little emphasis is placed on practitioners, students, school contexts, and teacher education here.           Whelan alludes to the larger problem when he points to the "growing, dysfunctional gulf between social studies theorists and classroom practitioners" (p. 22). This, he argues, threatens the field with factionalism" (p. 21). Whelan also makes a reasoned contribution to the arguments between the advocates of history and those in favor of the interdisciplinary study of contemporary social problems by calling for a history-centered curriculum that focuses on citizenship education along with social issues.           The next chapter by Saxe on the social studies in support of civic competence suffers from some of the very problems Whelan finds operating in the battle between these two camps: overgeneralization, dubious historical interpretations, and seeming lack of awareness of the degree to which the concept of civic competence has been problematized by many contemporary authors, including feminist and postmodernist writers. Saxe does not even mention the one example of such work found in this anthology: Nel Noddings' chapter on "Social Studies and Feminism." As Noddings (1998) put it more recently, citizenship education faces a "deepening dilemma" in liberal societies, a dilemma on which Saxe is silent. Beyond these lacunae, Saxe's invocation of Dewey to support "a common knowledge base" (p.44) ignores that Dewey repeatedly and explicitly argued the opposite. For example, see Experience and Education (1938, p.78).           The problem of lack of engagement with what other contributors say in their chapters weakens this book. According to Ronald Evans, whose chapter appears in Part III, "Social studies, as a broadly defined and interdisciplinary field devoted to the examination of issues and problems, seems to be in danger of dying" (p. 197). If Evans is correct in seeing the field moving toward Whelan's discipline-centered approach, one reason may be the lack of constructive dialogue among the competing camps. Perhaps using this book as a forum for exchange of ideas about the nature, ends, means, and practitioners of social studies would have been helpful for the field generally. Alternatively, Ross could have offered a final chapter in which he provided his own summative judgment of what these essays mean for predicting the future of the social studies.           This anthology would also have been strengthened by greater attention to the "hot button" issues of the last decade that will undoubtedly influence the future of the field, for example, the national standards movement that both Ross and Sandra Mathison discuss briefly in their chapters. This movement represents a clear threat to the position Whelan stakes out when he asserts that "many curriculum decisions appropriate for one time or one group of students are not necessarily appropriate for all times or all students" (p. 32), or Gloria Ladson-Billings' stance on "culturally relevant pedagogy." While progressive educators accept these ideas, contemporary educational policy is dominated by those who think otherwise. What are the implications for the social studies of such developments? Likewise, discussion of other contemporary influences on the curriculum such as professional organizations, including the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), American Historical Association, and Organization of American Historians, as well as the effects of Christian fundamentalists, immigration, tracking, mainstreaming, and urban decay, could all profitably have been included in this volume. Ross's anthology leaves the uninformed reader in the dark about key features of the contemporary context of social studies, whether these are to our liking or not.           A long lag time prior to publication presumably accounts for a number of statements scattered throughout this book that seem dated, such as Stephen Fleury's comment in his chapter on science and social studies that AIDS education has produced no positive results, or Sandra Mathison's claim in her otherwise keen chapter on assessment that performance assessment is "clearly the wave of the future in all disciplines" (p. 217). The latter statement seems doubly curious coming from a scholar working at this time in New York, just as the state moves away from its short-lived toleration of performance assessment and imposition of across-the-board Regents' examinations for all high-school students.           The second part of this book deals with "Social Issues and the Social Studies Curriculum." Two chapters deal with issues related to gender and two with race and multiculturalism. On the former topic, Jane Bernard-Powers takes a historical and liberal-democratic feminist approach in her chapter and Noddings a more relational feminist perspective. This contrast provides a good introduction to readers on the subject of gender and social studies education.           Noddings calls for the most comprehensive reconsideration of the social studies curriculum of any author included in this book. She argues that the social studies curriculum, its epistemological foundation, and understanding of citizenship are culture- and gender-bound, especially in terms of the opposition between public and private undergirding each of them. Noddings calls for social studies that educates about self as well as society, love, family, relationships, and gender roles. Throughout her essay, she offers concrete examples that link her theoretical approach directly to classroom applications.           Both Cameron McCarthy and David Hursh in Part II and Ladson-Billings in Part III address multicultural issues. McCarthy's essay suffers from a lack of articulation with the subject of this book, the social studies curriculum. Indeed, nowhere in the essay are the terms social studies or social education used. This is unfortunate since McCarthy's focus on dogmatism and essentialism might productively have been linked to one of Ross's central questions: who controls the social studies curriculum? One approach to this question might be through an examination of U.S. history and world history textbooks, another topic left unexamined by this volume. Given that social studies textbooks define social studies curriculum in many places and a few large states essentially dictate what textbooks get published in this country, the absence of a chapter on this subject leaves an important aspect of the social studies curriculum unaddressed.           Hursh takes a more practice-oriented approach to multicultural social studies than McCarthy's perspective from critical theory, while Ladson-Billings links "culturally relevant pedagogy" to the social studies through the stories of two teachers, Gertrude and Ann. Ladson-Billings comments that her "primary motivation for writing this chapter is to address what I believe is missing in the social studies dialogue--the importance of instruction." Her reminder is important: regardless of the quality of the curriculum, it cannot teach itself" (p. 135). The authors found in Part III heed this advice by providing a rationale for infusing their special interests into the curriculum as well as curricular models and examples of how these approaches work in practice.           Other chapters in Part III include Epstein on social studies and the arts, Fleury on social studies and science, Merry Merryfield on global studies, Evans on social issues, and Mathison on assessment. Mathison covers the territory of assessment nicely and provides conceptual clarity on this often forgotten topic in social studies. She provides a solid assessment of the "technical and social aspects of assessment," linking her discussion to minority students and speakers of languages other than English. One section on "The Social Studies and Performance Assessment" deals briefly with the curriculum standards promulgated by NCSS.           Merryfield's chapter begins by citing a NCSS position paper on global education and builds a framework that responds to the themes enunciated there. This approach wisely emphasizes the integration of themes into variable types of content rather than stipulating a rigid course outline. Epstein's chapter on social studies and the arts uses a similar flexible strategy that offers a template rather than a prescription. Her essay includes a lengthy discussion of research, some of it her own but incorporating the theories of Howard Gardner, Jerome Bruner, and Suzanne Langer. Together, these features make her chapter almost twice as long as any of the others but provide a substantive review of work that has engaged Epstein directly over a number of years.           Fleury discusses positivism and paradigm shifts in science education as well as the history of the interface between social education and science over the course of four decades. He offers a compelling argument for the pertinence of discussions about science, technology, and values to the social studies classroom. Like a number of other authors in this anthology, Fleury teaches in New York State. Ironically, this state dictates a narrowly prescribed, four-year social studies requirement with Regents' examinations for graduation that offers very little space for implementation of Fleury's ideas. In a section devoted to social studies practice, perhaps a chapter on interdisciplinary explorations of social studies and literature might have been more realistic as measured by what is feasible today in the greatest number of school settings nationwide. Finally, none of these authors directly addresses the impediments to infusing such a broad array of interdisciplinary emphases into curriculum that most practitioners across the country already characterize as "overstuffed.           Despite the real strengths of many of these essays, this anthology would have benefited from a clearer sense of purpose, greater editorial direction, or a final, summative chapter to help the less informed reader sift through and assess the divergent perspectives contained here. For example, while Ladson-Billings and Hursh's views seem complementary, Hursh's comprehensive, social reconstructionist approach to multicultural social studies education is at odds with Saxe's, who finds the "heroes and holidays" form of multiculturalism quite adequate. Greater explication by these authors of the phase theories of James Banks (1994), Christine Sleeter (1991), Peggy McIntosh (1983, 1986), or Mary Kay Tetrault (1987) might make the dilemmas, tensions, and struggles that derive from competing theoretical foundations more accessible to the preservice and inservice teachers Ross identifies as among the audience for this book.           On page 211, Ron Evans makes a comment that highlights the central conundrum of this anthology: "Yet the hopes of would-be reformers must be tempered by a realistic assessment of classroom constancy documented by Larry Cuban's descriptions of the classrooms of the past." In its entirety, this book tips more towards what has been and what might be than what is as regards the social studies curriculum. The minimal consideration found here of contemporary realities and constraints means that the anthology offers little help to the reader in coming to terms with how to move from what has been and what is to what might be, thus perpetuating the continuation of "classroom constancy."           At the outset, we asked what this anthology tells us about the contemporary state of the social studies field. First, despite the fact that Ross rightly cites the crucial significance of distinguishing between the formal and enacted curriculum, many authors appear heedless of the distinction. Second, the old debates about what the social studies ought to be continue, even in an era when real power over the social studies curriculum is increasingly wielded by persons and groups outside the social studies field. Third, social studies theorists often evince scant concern for the social studies curriculum as a whole, preferring to focus on the particular part of it they most care about. Fourth, advocates of contrasting positions such as discipline-centered versus issues-centered go their own ways, ignoring each other's position rather than engaging in debate. Finally, too often little explicit consideration is given to what various conceptions of curriculum might mean for teacher education in real world settings.           Paradoxically, the foregoing observations on the contemporary state of the social studies serve to make this anthology an accurate representation of the field. The gaps evident in this volume are, broadly speaking, the gaps in social studies theory and research. In that regard, Ross has assembled an anthology that is more than the sum of its parts, a volume likely to be of use as both a class text and as a handy update for educators who are not social studies specialists. Moreover, Ross's own introductory chapter goes a long way toward thinking productively about what some of his authors unfortunately skim over. References Banks, J. (1994). An introduction to multicultural education. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York: Macmillan. McIntosh, P. (1983). Interactive phases of curriculum and personal re-vision with regards to race. Working Paper No.219. Wellesley, MA: Wellesley College. McIntosh, P. (1989). Interactive phases of curriculum re- vision: A feminist perspective. Working Paper. No. 124. Wellesley, MA: Wellesley College. Noddings, N. (1998) The Deepening Dilemma of Civic Education in a Liberal Society. Social Science Record 35 (1), 9-14. Sleeter, C. (Ed.). (1991). Empowerment through multicultural education. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Tetrault, M.K. (1987). Rethinking women, gender, and social studies. Social Education 51 (3), 170-178.