The origin of Social Studies in the curriculum of the United States

Abstract

Historians link the origin of Social Studies with the publication of the Report of the Social Studies Committee (CSS) of the National Education Association (NEA), which Ravitch calls "birth certificate of the field of social studies" (1987, 348). Since its publication in 1916, the origins of Social Studies have been much discussed, but the historiography of the Area has hardly deepened the events that occurred prior to the Report. Our work analyzes these initial moments and their transfer to the national curriculum, in the context of the changes that took place in that country in the transition from the 19th to the 20th centuries. Pay special attention to the racial issue, integration and education of former slaves underlining the role of Thomas Jesse Jones, a sociologist who had worked with African-American and Native American students at the Hampton Institute of Virginia and who would chair the Committee for Social Studies, influencing to include in the Report the postulates developed at the Hampton Institute.