Those of us who recognize the serious consequences of this poor treatment of the subject have a special obligation to make sure our Christian school students are not cheated out of an extremely important part of their Christian education. The first thing we can do to make our own social studies teaching more effective is to understand that our responsibility is great. History and other related subjects help the student to learn about the world God has placed him in, about examples and lessons from the past, and about present concerns for life. No other subject, apart from the Bible itself, offers such great opportunities to develop a proper Christian philosophy in the student toward the many social issues that he will face in life. Public schools are certainly using social studies classrooms to dispense humanistic attitudes toward the wide avenue of issues that this part of the curriculum touches.
Mass media add to the negative influence, and it reaches our Christian school students as well.
It is up to us as Christian school teachers to provide a biblically based, informed social studies emphasis so that our students will not stumble into the snares and pitfalls common in this field. Second, we must strive to make our social studies classrooms as interesting for the students as possible. History classes and other social studies classes have gained a reputation as being boring classes where the teachers do nothing but lecture in a monotone and give tests. Social studies need not be dull and lifeless, and it is our fault if we let it remain so. There are two major ways that we may add some zip to our courses.