American Studies: Meeting Student Needs in Shawnee Mission, Kansas

Abstract

needs of students who will be the decision-makers of the twenty-first century. Students today frequently find life experiences fragmented and disjointed; thus they continually face the question of how to generalize from seemingly unrelated data. To be decisive they need the ability to synthesize from diversity: from television programs that provide political information; from newspapers that furnish insights into current happenings; from professional publications that offer expertise about the way business can be conducted; and from impulsive, informal conversation with colleagues that add to confusion. A quality American Studies program, then, must meet the essential needs of the contemporary student. It needs to integrate knowledge; it needs to provide survival skills and abilities; it needs to promote opportunities to deal thoughtfully with ethical and moral issues; and it needs to ultimately succeed in stimulating involvement through active participation in life-learning experiences. It is in this environment that learners can cope effectively with the ever-exploding knowledge from ever-diverging sources. The American Studies program of the Shawnee Mission School District attempts to provide a curriculum that answers these needs. Integrating traditional disciplines and emphasizing life-learning activities are basic to its approach. This program is a coordinated curriculum as well as an integrated instructional model in its approach to learning. Sound planning is the safest guarantee of an ordered and sequenced curriculum. The school district's planning efforts for a revised Social Studies curriculum involved the energies of many individuals over the last four years. Eventual revisions would affect 20,000 students in the ten junior and