The dominant image of social studies instruction as portrayed in educational research and popular culture is not flattering. Students passively listen to teachers lecture. Students transfer facts and ideas from the textbook to worksheets. Students are marched methodically through time, chapter by chapter, and must commit to memory fragmented lists of people, events, ideas, dates, and places. The past is not connected to the present.
Controversy is avoided.
Multiple perspectives are missing. While the above portrait misrepresents many outstanding history teachers, it is a recurrent theme in the research on classroom practice, and it helps to explain survey data indicating that a disproportionate number of students find social studies to be their least favorite subject. Survey data also indicate that many teachers would like to conduct more active, inquiry-oriented lessons, but feel they lack sufficient understanding and training to do so. The remarkable power of the human mind suggests that instructional success may be far more dependent on generating student interest than on students' cognitive capacity, skill, or prior achievement. The genesis of this book and TCI deserves mentioning.