By As I have attended state and regional social studies meetings, I've had the opportunity to learn about the concerns of social studies educators across the country. The single most common theme, no matter what part of the country I've been in, is testing.
Teachers talk about the pressure they and their students are under to perform well on the test.
Repeatedly, I hear how this pressure has affected both curriculum content and teaching strategies. The balance of depth versus breadth in the social studies curriculum is, at best, always a challenge. We want our students to learn to think, to analyze information, to see from various points of view, and to develop effective decision-making skills. And we want them to learn and understand information, which, after all, is needed to be able to think, analyze, and make decisions. Finding that balance between coverage and analysis is never easy.