The first principle has been used both as an element of teaching procedures, and also as a principle for structuring the curriculum. In both cases, I will suggest, the second principle offers us a direction to richer teaching practice and a richer curriculum. For the purposes of this paper, I will focus on the elementary years, though much the same arguments could be made about any stage of schooling. To show the long influence of the first principle, I will consider its early articulation in the work of Herbert Spencer, and its use by John Dewey and others in shaping the curriculum, and in particular in giving a foundation for the Social Studies curriculum. In my experience this principle is believed by nearly every teacher and professor of education I have encountered.
Most people assume it is so obviously true that even to question it suggests a degree of nuttiness.
The Social Studies was designed to tie all the knowledge being learned in other curriculum areas to the child's experience. So, we must start with what is most profoundly known by the student, and build new knowledge on that basis. Apart from this slightly odd way of putting Spencer's principle, I think there are four reasons why we might be wary of accepting it. The third objection is less directed at the principle than at the way it has been, as far as I can see, invariably interpreted in education, and in the construction of the elementary Social Studies curriculum. It is assumed that what children know first and best is the details of their everyday social lives.