A Gateway to Social Studies through Topical History
Part 3 of 5

JAMES E. DAVIS
H. MICHAEL HARTOONIAN
RICHARD VAN SCOTTER
WILLIAM E. WHITE

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To many students and adults, history is, as Henry Ford said, “one *** event after another.” Even after many years as a centerpiece of the curriculum, U.S. history often is seen as a trivia contest of facts, events, battles, and personalities arranged chronologically. Around this history hub, social science courses are often offered as electives that counselors use to fill gaps in student schedules. Few connections and almost no integration of cultural knowledge exist in this intellectual area that has immense importance to people’s lives in a democratic republic and market-driven economy.

A LIVING HISTORY METHODOLOGY
     Museums do not approach history in the same way. In a museum, history is topical and interdisciplinary. History is not a recitation; it is a hands-on experience that promotes engagement, challenges visitors with key ideas, and inspires individuals to explore further. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the nation’s largest living history museum, in partnership with the Social Science Education Consortium, scholars, educators, and teachers, is developing engaging learning materials for social studies classrooms. All Americans must understand that they are part of a dynamic, ongoing venture. If citizens do not have fundamental knowledge about the history and culture in which they live and the intellectual tools needed to apply this content, the American system cannot be sustained. However, such an understanding empowers Americans to accept their responsibility, participate in the republic, and shape the present and future.
     The Colonial Williamsburg History and Civics Project is based on essential principles of democracy, including the idea that America was created, maintained, and nourished by vigorous and intelligent debate. In a democratic society, the individual is ruler and is ultimately responsible for the conduct of the government. An indispensable requisite of a democracy is that its citizens possess the ability to understand and resolve contradictory ideas. Issues in a democratic society can be addressed effectively by reconciling and balancing one or more of four sets of value tensions: (1) law versus ethics, (2) private wealth versus common wealth, (3) freedom versus equality, and (4) unity versus diversity.
     On this framework of debate, the Williamsburg project is organized around fifteen topics, each containing case studies, or a series of salient events and issues in America’s civic existence. The topics span the social studies — government and law, political economy, institutions (sociology), landscape (geography), culture, and America in the world (foreign policy). The program includes other topics germane to a rich American studies curriculum: diversity, religion and the republic, science and technology, education and citizenship, war and the military, protest, and violence.
     This article is a snapshot of each topic in the Colonial Williamsburg program. The first two — The Great Debate and National Narratives — serve as an intellectual platform for the remaining topics that represent essential content of U.S. national heritage.

THE GREAT DEBATE
     Neil Postman (1996, 70-71) wrote that all nations begin as question marks and end as exclamation marks, or at least with a period. It is tempting to view the United States as if the American Creed is a finished product and settled issue — an exclamation point. Existing history curricula often tell a story about America that instills a sense of national pride. To do so runs the risk of creating in students zealous nationalism or, as is often the case, indifference (Postman).
     Instead, the Colonial Williamsburg program portrays the story of America as an experiment and a fascinating, perpetual question. The story is designed to instill a sense of pride based on the belief not that America is superior to other countries, but that it is unique, youthful, admirable, and open to unfulfilled human possibilities. The project starts from the idea that the U.S. Constitution is not a catechism, but a hypothesis. As such, the American experiment is the center of continuous argument (Postman 1996).
     As we mentioned previously, this argument centers on four sets of values that create both tension and synergy. These values and the tensions they create represent the ethos and aims of America. Understanding and reconciling them creatively and productively is the essence of the democratic mind.

NATIONAL NARRATIVES
     The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution are the intellectual backbone of the United States. They represent a national spirit embracing the principles of freedom and federalism. The founding of the republic came about through not one revolution, but three. Together, these events gave the country its founding documents. The first, in 1776, was a revolution against government, as revealed in the Declaration of Independence. The second was a revolution for government that took place in 1787, when the Congress of the old Confederation passed the new Constitution. The third, completed in 1791 with the ratification of the Bill of Rights, was a revolution for the people. This series of American revolutions produced a set of governing principles embedded in the documents that represent a statement of ideals, each balancing the purpose and intent of the others.
     Highlighting these three events should not lead the teacher or student to believe that the revolution was completed by the 1790s. Rather, the United States is in a continual state of revolution spurred by great debates. The next revolutionary event took place in 1800 with the election of Thomas Jefferson as president, the rise of republicanism, and the establishment of a two-party system. This was followed by other revolutions, including the impact of Jacksonian democracy, the Civil War, the women’s suffrage movement, and the New Deal.
     The architects of the founding documents continued to debate during the nation’s early decades. Embodied in the Declaration of Independence are republican principles, referred to as the Jeffersonian interpretation of the American Revolution. Within the U.S. Constitution are federalist principles, or the Hamiltonian interpretation. Joseph Ellis referred to these as the “spirit of ‘76” and “spirit of ‘87,” respectively (2002, 10). Advocates held divergent ideas on how the states should be governed. Their debate was about not only the size, scope, and power of government, but also whether the term “United States” is a singular or plural noun.

AMERICAN LANDSCAPE
     The people of the United States are inhabitants of a varied and generous environment. They understand that land as a commodity for private gain is set against land as a cultural resource. Given this relationship, Americans must address the question: Does the land belong to us, or do we belong to the land? This balance recognizes the value of landscape as both private and common wealth. Americans’ strong individualist ethos has encouraged expansive development, sometimes at the expense of the environment.
     In enterprising ways, Americans have taken advantage of plentiful natural resources to forge a materially rich nation. However, economic growth strains the environment, threatening to deplete resources, pollute habitats, create climate change, and render species extinct. Americans have grappled with these issues for generations as industrialization, economic growth, and high-tech communications increasingly change the nation’s landscape.

AMERICAN CULTURE
     American society can be understood as an amalgam of old and new: old traditions from Europe, Africa, and Asia blended to create a new culture. This culture has been continually renewed with the arrival of immigrant groups and growth of musical genres, schools of art, architectural themes, and so forth.
     From the beginning, citizens depended on each other to clear forests, build homes, cultivate crops, and create companionship to forge a nation and generate wealth. Opposed to this sense of community is the ethic of the rugged individual, wandering spirit, and introspective loner in the pursuit of freedom. Americans value working together in teams, on battlefields, and in community projects, yet they celebrate and even glorify individual heroes, from the Lone Ranger, James Dean, and Clint Eastwood characters to celebrated captains of industry and athletic champions. As corporations and other organizations were built around urban and suburban lives, the tension intensified between the need for fellowship and the lure of the lonely road.
     Americans invented the term social capital during the twentieth century to capture the essence and value of people working collaboratively in a community for common good. Like its counterpart physical and human capital (i.e., tools and training that improve productivity and efficiency), social capital embodies the idea that social networks have value. With the growth and decline of civic organizations, social capital has ebbed and flowed. Americans witnessed an impressive rise followed by a substantial decline of community groups over the past half century, and this change has had immense effects on civic life (Putnam 2000).

A DIVERSE NATION
     There is no escaping the diversity of twenty-first-century Americans. It is represented physically in places of worship: Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, and more. It is in schools across the nation, where increasingly, the student population is composed of immigrant families who speak more than one hundred languages, from Spanish to Marathi (Turque 2006). However, these are only the most visible indications of the broad diversity that is a deep current cutting through the whole of U.S. history. Even the mixture of culture, languages, and religions has deep roots in American soil. It began with the intermingling of Native American, European, and African cultures in the early seventeenth century, and it has continued for the last four centuries. Americans have drawn strength from that diversity. It represents the bedrock on which debate is founded and provides the fuel that feeds the acrimony of debate.
     This diverse nature of American culture has been at the root of much contention and concern. Sometimes differences lead to divisiveness, fear, and conflict. Over time, pluralistic ethnic identities have enlarged and enriched the American Creed to fit into a comprehensive story, but not without resistance, struggles, and setbacks. The challenge has been to answer the perennial question: Can a coherent, stable, unified culture be created out of people of diverse traditions, languages, and religions?

CHANGING INSTITUTIONS
     The American identity is a function of institutional membership. Americans are citizens of their homes, schools, places of worship, workplaces, recreation centers, government, and social groups. The aggregate of these memberships defines people. These institutions also collectively define communities and contribute to common wealth.
     Institutions are the building blocks of a community. An institution may be both informal, like a social handshake, and formal, like a government bureau. Together and as individuals, citizens create and shape these institutions. At the same time, these institutions shape individuals in profound ways. As people carry out their daily lives in interaction with institutional environments, they face issues that require technical and moral answers. Approached thoughtfully, institutions help people make sense of their lives. It is challenging for individualistic Americans to understand the nature of institutions, how they are formed, and how they shape people.

POLITICAL ECONOMY
     In 1776, Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations and explained emerging economic life — the market system. The market has become the sea in which all modern nations, including the United States, swim. Smith popularized the term political economy and taught that the social benefit would be realized only in the wider public sphere, where educated citizens are engaged in civic life and create a vibrant material and ethical infrastructure in the community. From its Greek roots, political economy means “public household management” (Bellah et al. 1992, 84). In other words, a nation’s private wealth is only as real as the richness of its common wealth.
     During its short history, the United States has changed from an agrarian nation to a manufacturing economy and, recently, to a postindustrial society. Any transformation in the economic base of society will modify other aspects of the culture. The Industrial Revolution brought large manufacturing enterprises, added to the population of cities, and expanded urban society. Significant technological development, such as automobiles, televisions, and computers, created an entirely new culture whose landscape and relationships are altered by work and leisure. American life is marked by a high degree of economic insecurity that has been described as a “gambler’s society” (Bellah et al. 1992, 85). The quest for freedom is offset by precarious economic fragility that threatens the balance with equality. Workers are afforded ample economic opportunity, but success is problematic, and failure can be devastating (Bellah et al.).

GOVERNMENT AND LAW
     In virtually every American town or central area of a major city, there is a courthouse, post office, police station, library, schoolhouse, and so forth. Here, local, county, state, and federal government mingle and finely mesh into citizens’ lives as they serve various community needs. However, citizens are eternally skeptical of government. Since the Revolution, Americans have searched for a government that provides the most protection without limiting the liberty of individuals.
Law is the foundation on which people build their government. The United States is a nation of laws, and its citizens believe in the rule of law. In the enactment of law, citizens mediate and define the issues that each generation deems most important, and in today’s litigious society, law is an important vehicle for mediating the constant U.S. debate. How much government and law are necessary for a good society?

RELIGION AND THE REPUBLIC
     The First Amendment right to freedom of religious expression, stating that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” (U.S. Constitution, Amendment 1) may be the most remarkable aspect of American culture. Yet few Americans understand how distinctive this simple, explicit statement makes them in the course of human history. Even today, most nations incorporate a state religion as integral to their cultural identity.
The Founding Fathers understood that moral and ethical behavior was essential for responsible citizens in sustaining a democracy. None of this should contradict the U.S. Constitution’s call for separation of church and state. However, there is no call to separate morality and politics. Ethical behavior is inseparable from democracy, and Americans continually uphold their democratic values and beliefs with evangelical zeal.
     Historically, the clergy, religious bodies, and religious associations have been concerned with public affairs. Clergy members supported the American Revolution; nineteenth-century evangelicals and utopian societies worked to create a better society; churches called for the abolition of slavery; and religious organizations were the fulcrum for the Civil Rights movement. Still, Americans debate the proper role of religion in government, science, business, and society.

AMERICA AND THE WORLD
     The United States has always been a global nation. It is tied to the world through immigration patterns, science and technology, art, the media, trade and travel, and political and military relationships. At first, America’s global interdependence was dependent on shipping and trade routes. Later, the transcontinental cable, telegraph, and telephone revolutionized global communications. By the twentieth century, airplane travel brought citizens of different nations together more conveniently and advanced international trade. Today, the dramatic effect of computer technology and the Internet on trade, communications, and diplomacy is evident. Products, capital goods, financial transactions, and labor cross international borders in drastically shortened time frames.
     Although Americans have always lived in or as a part of the world at large, it is mainly ideals that have informed their relationships with other countries. The United States has always seen itself as the harbinger of freedom and liberty for the world. Americans understood their Manifest Destiny to create an empire of liberty that stretched across North America. That mandate and that responsibility to secure and extend the blessings of freedom for the nation and for others has been, and continues to be, the central goal of American foreign policy.

EDUCATION AND CITIZENSHIP
     American views on education were derived from the Greeks, who saw education as a responsibility of the whole community, not only the schools. In a democracy, citizens need to deliberate the issues of their communities. Consequently, it is essential for citizens to be informed, engaged, and conversant. Education for youths and adults alike is an investment in individual citizens, the community, and the common good. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, most people learned to read in their homes, local parish schools, or a trade apprenticeship. As late as 1890, only 7 percent of teenagers were in high school, and only 1 percent attended college (Digest of Educational Statistics 1988). In contrast, newspapers, books, and community organizations were widespread. The whole community, including families, churches, businesses, voluntary associations, government, and local politicians, participated in the education of citizens.
     The increase in formal public education corresponded with the influx of nineteenth-century immigration and the concern that old-world education required strong instruction in American democratic principles. The role of schooling expanded during the next century. By 1970, more than 90 percent of Americans aged fourteen to seventeen years old attended high school, and soon a majority of them went to college as well (Digest of Educational Statistics 1988). With dramatic economic change during the twentieth century, schools played a larger role in the vocational, recreational, social, and psychological needs of children. Contemporary Americans continue to debate the role and importance of education in their communities.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
     In many ways, the history of the United States is the history of scientific and technological advancement. Americans cannot separate the idea of American progress from science and technology. Americans are believers in progress, and it is linked to invention, technology, productivity, convenience, accumulation, and economic growth. Technology and progress also are associated with the idea of freedom. The firearm that tamed the frontier, the railroad that linked East and West, and the typewriter, telephone, radio, television, automobile, computer, and cellular phone are powerful symbols of freedom and individuality.
     As technologies became increasingly sophisticated, they more drastically affected American culture. Early technologies such as the plow, the windmill, water power, and even the printing press did not measurably alter the integrity of religious, economic, and educational traditions. By 1850, factories and large-scale forms of production had changed the nature of work and family. This impact deepened during the twentieth century, and emerging technologies — particularly the automobile, television, and Internet —interrupted traditions and created new cultural trends (Postman 1992).

WAR AND THE MILITARY
     America has deep roots as a warrior nation and has been involved in a continuous series of wars. The nation was born in a revolution, was further defined in a great Civil War, fought two world wars, and carried on a protracted cold war, all over a relatively short time period. American literature, entertainment, sports, and language are full of war and military metaphors. Popular literature throughout the past century has been laced with military works, and films about war are popular with American audiences.
     At the same time, Americans believe in subordinating the military to civil authority. This idea is rooted in the American Revolution, occupation by British troops, quartering acts, and a distrust of the professional military. Americans revel in the ideal of the citizen soldier — a Cincinnatus or George Washington — who takes up arms to protect the republic and willingly returns to civilian life when the crisis subsides. It is also important to citizens that the U.S. military is deployed only in the name of liberty — sustaining the freedom of the republic or extending the promise of liberty to others. Herein rests one of the most contentious areas of American debate. The nation seldom employs its military might without widespread debate in local and national forums.

PROTEST
     America came into existence through protest addressing issues of equality, freedom, economy, law, and ethics (Lens 1966). Without the activists who sparked the revolution, the United States would not exist. Post-Revolution America would have been significantly different without radicals who raised the consciousness of the populace and challenged those in power. The right to vote for many may not have been won, or at least not as early. Public schools may never have been established. When would slavery have been abolished if protest and dissent did not exist? The shortened work week, improved working conditions, and welfare measures of the early twentieth century all occurred because some people defied conventions and had the courage to create a new social order. By the mid-twentieth century, protesters focused on extending civil rights to more citizens, particularly black Americans. A growing number of citizens also became sensitive to the environmental hazards caused by economic growth, automobiles, and population sprawl. By the close of the twentieth century, the effect of corporate power in people’s lives and impact of global economic expansion became salient concerns.

VIOLENCE
     America was born from the violence of displacement as Europeans pushed native people from their traditional lands. Violence has been a consistent part of the American experience. Mobs employed violence to protest British imperial policy in the 1760s. Violence became institutionalized in antebellum America with the “code duello” dueling method. Proponents of slavery and free soilers expressed political opinion in the violence now called Bloody Kansas. The violence of the post-Civil War West is legendary and ensconced in the national mythology, and the lawlessness of the 1930s gave rise to legendary criminals such as Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger, and Machine Gun Kelly. Violence plays out not only in crime and antisocial behavior among adults, but also in children’s games, fostered through the media, film, video games, the Internet, and sports. How can Americans reconcile their love of the law, ideals of freedom and equality, and heritage as an enlightened nation with this propensity to violence that has become an integral part of the American character?

REDEFINING SOCIAL STUDIES
     Embedded in each of these fifteen topics are case studies that engage students in an interrelated series of digitally based activities. Each case study focuses on a significant event in U.S. history. Many other case studies could be included if space in the school curriculum permitted. Given its role and importance in the culture, “Sports in America” may have been added as a sixteenth topic, but it is absent in state learning standards, which the Colonial Williamsburg program acknowledges. A similar situation exists for “Education and Citizenship,” an even stranger anomaly given the central role of education in the national culture. Nevertheless, the project developers believe it would be intellectually irresponsible to exclude this topic from a comprehensive social studies curriculum.
     Many of the case studies can be used in economics, government, sociology, geography, world history, or even physical sciences courses. However, rather than this fragmentation, we envision the curriculum becoming the centerpiece of social studies for as many as six semesters. In this configuration, a history and civics program would be the core of secondary school curriculum. Currently, other subjects included under the social studies umbrella are taught in a historical ways and with little or no interconnection within social studies.
     We say this not as authors with any narrow bias toward history; some of us have degrees in other disciplines and have taught various social studies subjects. We believe, as Williams James observed: "You can give humanistic value to almost anything by teaching it historically. Geology, economics, and mechanics are humanities when taught with reference to successive achievements of the geniuses to which these sciences owe their existence. Not taught thus, literature remains grammar, art a catalogue, history a list of dates, and natural sciences a sheet of formulas, weights, and measures." (qtd. in Postman 1996, 113).  The Colonial Williamsburg History and Civics Project represents a new generation of social studies curricular materials for schools, one that is visionary in using a wide range of technologies.

REFERENCES
Bellah, R., R. Madsen, W. Sullivan, A. Swidler, and S. Tipton. 1992. The good society. New York: Knopf.
Digest of Education Statistics. 1988. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Ellis, J. 2002. A book review of James F. Simon’s What Kind of Nation: Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and the Epic Struggle to Create a United States. New York Times Book Review, March 10, 10.
Lens, S. 1966. Radicalism in America. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell.
Postman, N. 1992. Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology. New York: Random House.
––––––. 1996. The end of education: Redefining the value of school. New York: Knopf.
Putnam, R. D. 2000. Bowling alone. New York: Touchstone.
Smith, A. 1976. The wealth of nations. Ed. E. Cannan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Turque, B. 2006. New faces, accents reshaping county: Immigrants steadily transform political and economic landscape. Washington Post, April 27, VA03.

Find more information on The Social Studies at http://www.heldref.org

JAMES E. DAVIS is the executive director of the Social Science Education Consortium in Boulder, Colorado. He is also a civics textbook coauthor.

H. MICHAEL HARTOONIAN is a professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota and past president of the National Council for the Social Studies.

RICHARD VAN SCOTTER is an educator and writer who lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and a contributor to the media on cultural issues.

WILLIAM E. WHITE is the executive producer and director of educational program development at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and is responsible for the foundation’s Teacher Institute Program and Electronic Field Trip Series. He received his doctorate in American studies from the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia.