The author of this article states that "as teachers scramble to meet math and reading standards, social studies lessons have been pushed far back on the list of academic priorities, especially in the early grades." One of the results is that young students are not receiving instruction in how to deal with sensitive issues like race, class, equity and gender. In other words, they are not gaining the skills to connect with their world when Social Studies as a content area is relegated to the back burner.
The article describes a 6-hour workshop in a Brooklyn school that looks at teaching about race. It's a beginning step toward helping teachers help young learners fill in gaps left by missing social studies instruction.
The Library of Congress has thousands of primary sources to help teachers in their social studies instruction. Call it literacy instruction if we must - media literacy, visual literacy, reading literacy, even math literacy in some cases - but let's do it!
Pre K - 2 Social Studies/History pre-service teachers sensitive topics
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