Expanding Environments: The Transition From Culture Epochs to Technocratic Control

Abstract

Introduction

My purpose here is to suggest that the elementary social studies curriculum has passed from a nineteenth century agrarian locus of philosophical thought to a twentieth century technological basis without changing the topic headings. This has been accomplished by simply updating the details of the subject matter content in the curriculum to fit the modem technological society. It thus appears to the uncritical observer to be “modern” in outlook with the sequence fitting the “natural” pattern of child growth and development. The reasoning supporting the curriculum is usually that of moving the child “from the known to the unknown,” a somewhat tired truism going back at least more than three-hundred years to Comenius. “Teaching means leading from the known to the unknown,..” (quoted in Gundem, 1992, p. 49). In modern Piagetian terms it means moving children from the simple to the complex. The updated subject matter, combined with these irrefutable pedagogical slogans, has provided elementary social studies with an acceptable face to present to the technological society. This change has enabled the curriculum to endure over the years despite considerable criticism (Akenson, 1989; Douglass, 1967; Kaltsounis, 1964; Larkins, Hawkins and Gilmore, 1987; LeRiche, 1987,1992; Ravitch, 1987; Smith and Cardinell, 1964; Welton and Mallan, 1976,1988,1992).