Oklahoma Priority Academic Student Skills (PASS): Social Studies
Social Studies
Social studies is the integrated study of the social sciences and humanities to promote civic competence. Social studies draws upon such disciplines as anthropology, archaeology, economics, geography, history, law, philosophy, political science, psychology, religion, and sociology, as well as appropriate content from the humanities, mathematics, and natural sciences. The primary purpose of social studies is to help young people develop the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world.
Oklahoma schools teach social studies in Kindergarten through Grade 12. As a subject area, social studies may be difficult to define, because it is at once multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary. Social studies may be taught as a blend of history, geography, civics, economics, and government in one class, perhaps called “social studies,” or it may be taught as a series of separate discipline-based classes, such as “United States History” and “World Geography,” within a social studies department. However it is presented, social studies as a field of study incorporates many disciplines in an integrated fashion, and is designed to promote civic competence. Civic competence is the knowledge, skills, and attitudes required of students to be able to assume “the office of citizen,” as Thomas Jefferson called it.
A social studies education encourages and enables each student to acquire a core of basic knowledge, an arsenal of useful skills, and a way of thinking drawn from many academic disciplines. Thus equipped, students are prepared to become informed, contributing, and participating citizens in this democratic republic, the United States of America.