Social Studies in General Education

Abstract

T HE first and perhaps most fundamental purpose of social education is the development of common social directions. The fact that we are today suffering from widespread confusion and conflict about values-the ends to be servedis so well documented by students of society that it can no longer be seriously challenged. With the development of science and technology the activities of men have become more and more finely differentiated. The system of common values which comprised the basis of social judgment in the earlier years of our nation is now rapidly dissolving in the acids of specialization. Social perspectives are becoming highly specialized and partial. Men tend to see problems, facts, and values from the standpoints of their fragmented social outlooks. Their specialized minds are but fragments compared to the mind required by the total community life. At the same time, however, men are increasingly interdependent, even if only in a mechanical sense, in the processes by which they carry on the activities essential to their material welfare. Thus arises the paradoxical situation of a society composed of persons whose specialized behavior has widespread social consequences and yet whose sense of values and social directions and whose patterns of thought are highly differentiated, conflicting, and confused. Moreover, social problems involve relations among persons-among their interests, attitudes, conceptions, and modes of thinking. Solutions to these problems, hence, require the reconstruction of the characters of the persons involved in the problems to the end that mutual purposes and some measure of common social orientation are attained as a basis of social action. This fact means that the people, at least the people of a democracy, are themselves inextricably involved in social problems. They are not only factors in the problems, but, furthermore, the resolutions of the problems and the recon-. struction of the ideas and characters of individuals must proceed simultaneously and reciprocally. We often believe that students come to us empty-headed. On the contrary, their minds are literally filled with incompatible social beliefs and ideals that have been deposited in the common sense of the people from various historical periods. These