Historical Parallels for the Sixties and Seventies: Primary Sources and Core Curriculum Revisited

Intent on alerting curriculum developers to cyclical elements in social studies trends during the last 90 years, this paper reviews the two most pervasive national movements at the secondary level: 1) the source study movement in which students' use of primary source materials was emphasized in history instruction from the 1880's through the 1910's; and, 2) the core curriculum movement in which Social Studies and English were most commonly combined into block time courses for all students from the 1920's through the 1950's. These movements were selected for review because they exhibited some of the most important characteristics of the new social studies of the 1960's and of the social studies emerging in the 1970's. The latter reforms are considered comparable to the core curriculum just as the reforms of the 1960's are to the scientific historiography of the source study movement. The reviews include discussions of the forces which produced, sustained, and ended them, and conceptual models for classifying and comparing them to their recent and future variations. Historically, curriculum reformers gave little attention to previous movements, whether similar or not. Citing this as a dysfunctional inconsistency for the social scientists and educators who advocate and lead reform movements, the author calls for a variety of studies in Social Studies history. Sources cited are annotated in a six-page bibliography. (Author/DJB)