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Herman has taken her lessons to heart. When her 7-year-old son, Ian, was in preschool, his teacher worried that he wasn't verbal enough and suggested that Herman try some of her exercises on the boy. Herman pressed him to describe in detail what he saw when they were at home or on the street. "It worked!" Herman says.

"People all think that in a bad economy, they need skills for a job," said Christopher Nelson, president of St. John's. "What they don't realize is that a liberal arts education will give them skills for life, and that will get them a job."

St. John's is one of a handful of American colleges that offer a curriculum built upon great works of literature, art, science and mathematics. Students read and discuss texts by Homer, Euclid, Chaucer and Einstein. There are no majors; students graduate with broad knowledge in several disciplines but a specialty in none, and without anything approaching vocational skills. Investing in a St. John's education requires a leap of faith.

Sadly, much too often, social studies courses are regarded as relatively unimportant subject matter, whether in elementary school, middle school, or high school. This perception leads to diminished attention paid to social studies as a serious subject area, yet in the overall development of the intellect of students, no other subject matter content holds as much promise.

"I think we include social studies in the curriculum for the wrong reasons. It doesn't help us avoid the mistakes of the past, and if voting turnout is an indicator of good citizenship, it doesn't have much to do with that either. Social studies is probably best understood as an organized way of helping students develop understandings and appreciations that have long-term staying power, and that will influence them in positive ways to do the right thing when doing the right thing is hard to do."

First, you must understand the content of the social studies at a level appropriate to that which you intend to teach. To understand content means more than mere memorization of facts. To understand content for a teacher means that you can explain it in more than one way to others, whether the content concerns facts, generalizations, principles, themes, and so on.

Curriculum Standards for Social Studies

National U.S. History Standards for Grades 5-12

increase student participation in rigorous college preparatory courses, better align expectations between high school and postsecondary education, hold these systems accountable, and ensure students graduate from high school ready for college or the workplace in the global economy.

While states invest significant resources in education programs, governors also recognize and appreciate the federal government’s contribution to provide additional resources or assistance for those most in need.

In this new economy and era of education reform, now is the time to reform postsecondary education by increasing relevance and rigor, accountability, and linkages with kindergarten-12th grade (K-12) education and the workplace, and by expanding financial aid to students of all ages.

But such cuts have dismayed and frustrated some educators and parents, who say that children need more, not fewer, foreign language skills to compete in a global marketplace.

interactive software, made by Rosetta Stone, allows students to learn at their own pace.

The program focuses on a project based, in-depth and multi-cultural curriculum in six main fields: the student’s native language, second language, individuals and societies, experimental sciences, mathematics and computer science, and the arts.

Nichols added, however, that as the school moves to implement the IB program, Advanced Placement classes would most likely be phased out.

So why teach? It sounds exhausting, stressful, and almost impossible to do well! In fact, we teach because the rewards are outstanding. When your students tell you at the end of the year that they can’t believe how much they’ve learned…that is a reward. When former students, now in college, return to your classroom to get a hug, to thank you for what you did to help them believe in themselves, and to tell your present students what it was like in “their day”…that is your reward. I just received a letter from the parent of a former student who is now in graduate school. She wrote that she saw a quote and thought of me. It said, “You make a child feel good about himself and that’s a motivation to excel.” That is a reward. So, in answer to our questions of the 60’s, as teachers, we did change the world. We changed it when we taught children to believe in themselves and to share that knowledge. We changed it by teaching our youngest students to listen, to share, and to respect their classmates and themselves. We changed it by giving our students the tools and skills they needed to change their world. We made this a better world -- one child at a time.

People want support from Washington but not interference. They want accountability but not oversight. They want national leadership but not at the expense of local control.

And now that I'm here I'm even more convinced that the best solutions begin with parents and teachers working together in the home and the classroom.