Content Reading Of Social Studies

First, the elementary social studies standards goes from kindergarten to fifth grade. It is imperative to note that both the

High school history textbooks are seen, by students, as presenting the last word on American History. Rarely, if ever, do they question what their text tells them about our collective past. According to James W. Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me, they should be. Loewen has spent considerable time and effort reviewing history texts that were written for high school students. In Lies, he has reviewed twenty texts and has compared them to the actual history. Sadly, not one text measures up to the author's expectation of teaching students to think. What is worse, though, is that students come away from their classes without "having developed the ability to think coherently about social

When it comes to American history , the credibility of our textbooks has been a problem recent years, especially those in high school. And what we are taught in class seem to be far away from our real life. Facing such an irrelevant and boring subject, most high school students have no choice but to suffer the course and struggle for it. The book Lies My Teacher Told Me may account for this phenomenon to some extent.

It is important to have a successful education, but common core will not only affect the schools it will also affect how students learn. According to Applebee, “From my perspective, the CCSS offers a strong and well-intentioned vision of the knowledge and skills needed by a college-and career-ready high school graduate.” (Applebee, 2013, pg. 25-33). With the world constantly changing in order to be successful is to have the fundamental structure built up for the individual. A successful person is usually successful because of the knowledge they have gathered. However, CCSS (Common Core State Standards) focuses on the main parts of education, reading, writing, and mathematics. Teaching common core is not simple to children or teenagers. Often each individual has a different way of learning. With common core, every individual is paced at the same

“For when textbook authors leave out the warts, the problems, the unfortunate character traits, and the mistaken ideas, they reduce heroes from dramatic men and women to melodramatic stick figures. Their inner struggles disappear and they become goody- goody, not just merely good.” (Loewen, pg. 29). “Lies My Teacher Told Me” is a non- fiction book written by author, American sociologist, and historian, James W. Loewen. The popular belief is that schools buy the textbook that best fits the curriculum, and by following these textbooks, students are learning to the best of their ability. However, Loewen challenges this belief by providing evidence from eighteen different American history textbooks. He believes that people in history should not be depicted as heroes when they simply are not. To continue, Loewen states that students find history to be so boring since they can not relate to it or the people in it. On page 354, he even concludes his book by stating, “Students will start finding history interesting when their teachers and textbook stop lying to them.”

James W. Loewen wrote the book “Lies My Teacher Told Me” to help students understand the past of the United States, and how it is effecting the present time. “Lies My Teacher Told Me” looks at 12 different American history textbooks, and points out the different lies, flaws, and sugar coated stories the textbooks present. Lowen explains how textbooks practice heroification, and how race and race relations are a major issue when it comes to American history. Among these topics, Lowen also sheds light on the truth about social classes in America, and how textbooks lie about the past and try to avoid the recent past all together.

This exposure to history may potentially cause social studies teachers to retract their summer reading assignments and discuss A Glass Castle instead. Many would argue that the current summer reading assignment, Black Boy by Richard Wright, contains similar themes and also discusses bits of U.S. history. Although these people speak the truth, The Glass Castle would make a better fit for the summer reading assignment simply because students can relate more to the plot and characters. Black Boy takes places between 1912 and 1937 and The Glass Castle takes place between 1957 and 2007. Students will find more in common with the characters in Walls’ work, causing them to show more interest in the assignment. Last year, one in every nine kids did not complete the summer reading assignment. This proportion would decrease if students felt engaged and had interest in the literature. A Glass Castle instills laughter yet also warms readers’ hearts. If we read and analyze this book at the beginning of the year, students will not feel stressed out during the first few weeks of school because it contains light content and a clear narrative

History is a remarkable subject that offers and eagles eye view into the past. With textbooks such as, Hist3, a great deal of interesting information can be acquired. However, a common misconception runs rampant through students minds; the idealism that history is useless and that the subject is that of a drag. Who can blame them? Our text books can only do so much in terms of providing the means in educating ourselves when we’re not in a class room and when given the opportunity to appear in class we have the luxury of (hopefully) having and interesting professor to enlighten us on all the side conflicts, affairs, and bloodshed that has happened. Even so, when we as students have exhausted the book and our instructors, we have the privilege

Why should high schoolers be forced to read a book that isn’t interesting to them? Often times they either do not apply to real life situations or even teach anything that a teenager would understand. So, the high schooler skims through the book and does not pay attention to any detail. High school classrooms need better books that can teach history in a fun way, and add some interesting things to which students can reflect and think on. A book read in high school, should allow the students to think critically about the text they are reading, should include some references to history, and incorporate themes that are understandable and relatable to a high school student’s life. This makes a book want to be read as well as enjoyable. The

Prior to writing this response paper, I had no pre-existing knowledge revolving around Common Core other than the negative ideas and opinions I’ve only vaguely heard, often including photos of honestly outrageous equations. What exactly is Common Core, according to them, and what is the goal? By definition, the Common Core State Standards Initiative details a list of subjects for students kindergarten through twelfth grade to have learned the by the end of each specific grade. The ultimate goal is to be certain that students across all of the states receive the same education and reach the same requirements in order to be prepared for college work; or, rather, the standardized tests that will determine whether or not they are even granted access into college in the first place.

History can be an intricate and laborious subject to teach and learn. James W. Loewen, author, historian, and sociologist, is the perfect example of someone who appreciates the subject in all aspects, but knows how underestimated it is. As he says in Lies My Teacher Told Me, “Our educational media turn flesh-and-blood individuals into pious, perfect creatures without conflicts, pain, credibility, or human interest” (Loewen 11). Throughout the book, he further elucidated the idea of that quote by introducing particular topics that deserved more details and acknowledgement. Loewen argues with enough reasoning from numerous textbooks that the writers aren’t involving all facts that should be included to inform the students. Nearly all points

In author James W. Loewen’s book Lies My History Teacher Told: Everything American Textbooks Got Wrong, it is obvious that James Loewen is very passionate about making sure that people know that not all the history they are taught is true. He also claims that the history books have false information planted in them: “The stories the history textbooks sell are predictable; every problem has already been solved or is about to be solved” (Loewen pg. 3). Loewen’s voice throughout this book is powerful, fulfilling and persuasive as he tackles the problem off false history being taught to Americans.

Textbooks are still being written for profit, politics, and nationalism. Education boards have been around for centuries and they are the ones who decide what they want their state or nation to recognize as valid history. Modern day education boards are revising textbooks to outline many narrow minded ideas such as in Texas where, “they wanted the texts to establish that the U.S. is a ‘Christian land governed by Christian principles” (The Week), and “ Slavery under the new standards, would no longer be described as America’s original sin, and would become “the Atlantic triangular trade” (The Week), such revisions will strongly affect the views of

The aim of Social Studies is the promotion of civic competence the knowledge, intellectual processes, and democratic dispositions required of students to be active and engaged participants in public life. Proverbs 19:2 (ESV) states," Desire without knowledge is not good, and whoever makes haste with his feet misses his way."For example it is essential for there to be commonalities across the grade levels so that there is a scaffolding of concepts to build from one grade level to the next.

The theoretical framework is founded on the pretense that much has been written concerning the problems that many students have with the comprehension of reading materials, especially content texts--science, math, and social studies. Alexander (1988) suggested that these children may be those who have little trouble with their basal readers or trade books, yet are unable to derive meaning from what they read in content area textbooks.