Social studies curriculum

The social studies curriculum in many of today's high schools fails in two obligations: first, students are not taught how to organize an examination of an area of the contemporary world in order to gain an understanding of the people, their problems, and what effect they have on the international scene, especially their relationship with the United States; second, time is seldom found to study the underdeveloped and/or non-western nations of the world community. The "Editor's Page" of Social Education calls our attention to the need of studying the non-western nations in two accent issues of April, 1959, and March, 1960. In the former, our lack of vision in the Far East, especially China, is called our "Blind Spot," while in the issue on Africa, Mr. Todd refers to ". . . our growing awareness of the importance of Africa . . ." as "New Horizons." America's high school principals recognized the need to study the entire world and placed the following premise in a position paper during the meeting of the National Association of Secondary School Principals in February, 1961: "Unless the students of today learn to live in the world of tomorrow they face annihilation in a global holocaust." I believe the curriculum deficiencies mentioned above can be adequately met in an advanced elective social studies course for those students who have completed the required studies. Many able students would welcome an ambitious and profitable offering which would allow them to increase their efficiency in familiar skills and acquire new methods and habits in study. Research, for example, would require more than the trusted encyclopedia because it would involve not only gathering information but interpreting facts and situations, sometimes from multiple points of view. A requisite to this accomplishment is that the student's education move from study skills alone into research skills. A program of study providing these opportunities would build on the foundation established by the existing curriculum, tie much of