re: #87 Zimriel Hi there Zimriel! “Social Studies” as a school topic has changed dramatically over the years. When I went to grade school (you know, the old three mile walk, through the rain and snow, uphill both ways) social studies was basically teaching about our form of governments - Federal (and in my case, NY). American History was a course all by itself and then we had “World History”. There wasn’t a helluva lot of attention to the correlations between and among the three.
Flash forward oh, about 30 some odd years later (and now it was taxi’s for 10 blocks, in rain, snow and still for some bizarre reason, uphill both ways) and I’m teaching GRADUATE STUDENTS about Real Estate law, but most of us on the law faculty figured we should give our students a quick test to see what they knew about law generally before going into the specific area of real estate law. The results were, to my thinking - and that of the Dean - appalling. Less than 10% of GRAD STUDENTS knew how laws were made or came about and the only thing they knew about courts was that the US Supreme Court was the “law of the land” as to cases not overturned by constitutional amendment or later Supreme Court cases.
So I was volunteered by the Dean to create a curriculum, syllabus and reference materials to teach all of our incoming Grad Students about - ta da - what they shoulda learned in social studies - how governments in the United States work and how laws come into being.
Ignorance of US history, English history and the at least significant “world history” AND how they were frequently intertwined at the COLLEGE LEVEL is absolutely astounding!