If an aucmpt were made in the ensuing weeks and month~ of late 1972 and early 1973 to assess the effects, good and bad, of the "new" social studies it would be a precarious venture indeed. Even if the scope of such ,tn assessment \\lerc to be kept relatively narrow, say one ~chool. or one school district within a large state system, it would still be a task be~ct with a nightmare of me.isurcmcnt difficulties. What tests, standard or othcr­wi'>e, would be employed'? The usual standard instru­ments fall under the criticism of trying to measure some­thing new in an old way. The more inventive newer approaches arc not valid because the parameters of their examination context arc too narrow and the benefits derived from norms arc seriously reduced. There arc teachers who attest to the effectiveness of new ap­proaches bcc,1usc of the good "vibes" they receive from the kids. But this kind of assessment is suspect in many quarters.

If the substance and processes promoted under the umbrella of the "new·· social studies had ever achieved a high enough degree of consensus of definition within lower and higher learning institutions across the land, or even within smaller educational administrative units, perhaps the measurement of effectiveness could be faced with less trepidation. But what kind of language is that: "a high enough consensus'!" "Who is to determine degree of consensus'! And so the measurement difficulties pile up.

It is not my intention here to enumerate the problems of assessment of the "new" social studies, nor is it my intention to present guidelines for overcoming such measurement obstacles; I am not capable of doing that even if I wanted to. My purpose is to express what I think various clements of the "new" social studies have tried to do - to take a close look at what has been auemptcd to further the cause. Not normative judgments of success or failure. but what seems to have been ac­complished by me and some other evangelists of the New.

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A Sin of Omission? Frank Brown

Then, by briefly examining the salient ideas found in a genre of humanistic impulses currently noticeable in the literature, I want to explore the viability of what might be tried from a humanistic frame of reference. Could it be that the sum total of the "new" social studies efforts add up to a pursuit of cognitive sterility'! Has the sociaJ studies curriculum consciously attempted the wholesale implementation of a program which causes the schools to become what Silberman calls "a repressive place'!" l Under the guise of the new, have expressions of human feeling been excluded from the heart of the dialogue'!

Inquiry/Conceptual Approach In Hawaii the label given the major thrust of the

social studies curriculum is, The Inquiry/Conceptual Approach.2 As the title denotes, two curriculum var­iables arc designated: method (inquiry) and content (conceptual). The Hawaii document seriously, and quite well, I think, attempts to overcome the traditional cur­riculum dichotomy of content/method by taking pains to view process (inquiry modes) as content. Further, the new guides stress modes of inquiry employed by social scientists utilizing concepts articulated by the various social science disciplines.3 The point I wish to make here is that the document is explicitly and almost totally geared to cognitive skills and abilities. The attempt is directly made to encourage learning of cognitive and rational processes of acquiring, ordering and utilizing knowledge. A rather complex model of inquiry is in­troduced to assist teachers in the understanding and implementation of the Inquiry/Conceptual Approach:'

The much talked about issue of values, which would seem to him of curriculum focused upon attitudes, emo­tions and beliefs, is viewed as content material to be analyzed by means of the suggested intellectual skills and abilities. As is now commonly accepted among advocates of the "new" social studies, the Hawaii guide, while strongly urging the study of values, frowns upon

the promotion of any particular set of substantive values. But the point here is that values arc content substance­to be inquired into as one might investigate the institu­tion of slavery, the New Deal of FDR, or the repeal of abortion laws. There is the implicit admonition not to be emotional as the students study everything from values to environmental pollution, or racial conflict, or evidences of widespread alienation. By all means, says the guide, do not avoid controversial issues; they arc, after all, the very essence of the social studies, but utilize rational modes of inquiry to do so.

Represented in the Hawaii guide (which is in the mainstream of "new" social studies across the nation) is an honest, judicious, intelligent effort to improve the quality of social studies education. I avidly support the ideas it promotes and I will continue to do so. There is, however, a gnawing apprehensiveness growing within me that the weight given to cognitive processes of ra­tional inquiry tends to orient teachers and students toward a view of issues and problems which negates the significant expression and acceptance of human feelings and responses. The humanistic is absent. The locus of self is somehow not only absent, but is seen as unworthy subjectivity, and to many is suspect in the pursuit of proper objective goals of inquiry. Bruner once made reference to the importance of gut level intuitive spon­taneous responses in human learning.11 But, like most of the prophets of the "new" social studies, he gained respectability for intensely human intuitive feelings by using them as a motivational tool for inspiring cogni­tive investigation. h is not enough just to feel; school is the place, apparently, where human feelings must be analyzed.

Before I go any further and risk the danger of falling into the ken of the "kooky" cult of far-out sensitivity training and self-awareness probes, let me try, with the aid of some current, and not so current literature to articulate what this illusive humanistic quality might be.

Humanistic Education Perhaps as concisely as possible, as expressed by

Weinstein and Fantini, humanistic education centers around a child's need to recognize and deal with his need for a satisfying self-definition, for constructive relationships with others, and for some control over what happens to him.B As viewed from this frame of reference, these needs are not something to be fulfilled indirectly as the result of cognitive approaches, or ob~ liquely as the result of children just being together in the

context of formal and informal activities in the school. "Education in a free society should have a broad human focus, which is served by educational objectives resting on a personal interpersonal base and dealing with stu­dents' concerns." 7

The deeply human concerns of those associated with the First Street School on New York's Lower East Side convey well the clement so Jacking in "new" social studies curricula. When conventional approaches arc abandoned "what arises is neither a vacuum nor chaos, but rather a new order, based first on relationships be­tween adults, and children and adults, and children and their peers, but based ultimately on such truths of the human condition as these: that the mind docs not func­tion separately from the emotions, but thought partakes of feeling and feeling of thought; that there is no such thing as knowledge per se, knowledge in a vacuum, but rather all knowledge is posscs,5ed and must be expressed by individuals; that the human voices preserved in books belong to the real features of the world, and that children arc so powerfully attracted to this world that the very notion of their curiosity comes through to us as a form of )ovc." 8

Gattcgno, in his book What We Owe Chilclren, re­minds us that the prime task of a teacher is "First to become a person who knows himself and others as per­~ons."11 This is requisite to significant interactions with students in a~sisting them to become, and subsequent cognitive concerns build upon the premise of awareness of the affective self. "It is needed to do and 110110 clo."1° "Seeing the students in our classrooms as persons, us endowed with a will that permits actions and generates by itself changes, we shall immediately be closer to them - closer to unders tanding each as a person and closer to helping each incrca.se his experience and his understanding of it - for we shall have it at our dis­posal what is indispensable for reaching any ends in­volving them."11

In Human Teaching for Human Leaming, George Brown insists that, "The cold, hard, stubborn reality is that whenever one learns intellectually, there is an in­separable accompanying emotional dimension. The relationship between intellect a nd affect is indestructibly symbiotic." 1:: It is only in the textbooks, experimental designs for one thing and another, and very often in the "new" inquiry/conceptual social studies curriculum that we somehow isolate intellectual experience from emo­tional experience. How a child feels about wanting to learn, how he feels as he learns, and what he feels after

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he has learned arc affcclive concerns inextricably woven inlo the formal and informal educalional process.

For some time now Carl Rogers has sought to maxi­mize learning :ind minimize teaching vi.i techniques of self direction, which induce self-discovered and self­appropriated learning.ia The deeply personal responses lo lif~ silualion and the awareness of their well springs and influences on the present ;ind fulurc self, and an associalion with others - these arc the things which Rogers believes significantly influence behavior. When the cognitive aspects of teaching become paramount, Rogers thinks the student begins to distrust his own experience, and consequently stitles significant learning.

In the summer of 1972 a task force of educators work­ing at the University of Hawaii developed a document called Goals .fc>r A Perj,m11ance-Bu.1·ed Undergracluate Tellcher !:ducation Program. u It is interesting and most pertinent here to note that in this three-part state­ment of goals it is the third part which addresses itself to the teacher as a facilitator of learning. Parts I and II arc labelled "Actualize Self' and "Help Others Become Actualized" and deal with such topics as (I) accept self, (2) accept ot~crs, (3) uccepl experience, (4) solve prob­lems, (5) use interpersonal communication skills, (6) use counsell.ing skills, (7) i.nvolve others in dccisionmaking, and (8) involve others m problcmsolving. The document views becoming a leacher as a deeply personal mailer. "It deals with (;1) the individual's perceptions and his openness to experience, (b) his regard for himself and others, (c) his ;1warcncss of the freedom to choose and the availability of alternatives, and (d) his ability and responsibility to choose both ends and means and to bear the consequences of his decisions. " 1~

A Sin of Omission Can it be that a sin of omission has been commiued'!

I~ an .earnest: honest endeavor to improve the quality ol social studies education has the curriculum material embraced intellectual skills and abilities to such a degree that the "deeply personal" aspects of human affect arc not present in our classrooms'! Has this neglect taken on a severity which is detrimental 10 the development of our young people'! Reviewing the aims of the "new" social studies brings these questions 10 the center of the dialogue, and my uneasiness grows.

Maybe it was intended that "new" social studies gui~es would provide teachers with the appropriate springboards for humanistic education. The teachers would take up where the guides left off. Perhaps the

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omission lies with the teachers. Perhaps because of a lack of humanistic teacher education, or the characteris­tics of the system, they have not been able to wed the affective with the cognitive, which George Brown refers to as confluent education. to

Practices Leading to Cognitive Orientation The grossly cognitive orientation of the inquiry/con­

ceptual model has already been mentioned. It is irnpor­talll to consider :i number of current practices, con­comitant to the curriculum content, which also appear to reinforce the cognitive frame of reference to the neg­lect of the affective. These practices do not purposely attempt to obviate affective concerns, but the result is that they could be doing just that. As I review some of these concurrent cmphJ-;e-; I intend no hierarchy of importance, I simply want to call attention to their importance to my central thesi!., namely, that our curric­ulum and our current practices might be neglecting or omitting a vitally important human clement in social studies education.

Behavioral objectives have been very much in vogue, and very often the "new" social studies advocates fram­ing goals in this manner. Expressing lesson and unit objectives in terms of observable student behaviors lends itself more readily to cognitive expression. Affective behaviors may also be observed, but when the curriculum is calling for intellectual skills and abilities, and this is right and proper as seen by most teachers, it is easy to understand the gravitation toward cognitive behavioral objectives . .In a film strip/audio tape presentation on instructional objectives by James Popham, which has been used extensively in Hawaii and elsewhere, the narrator refers to affective behavior as considerably more difficult to deal with because of its vague intangible naturc.n

The work of Bloom and others resulting in the Taxon­omy ?r Educ~tio~al Objectives into the categories of Cognitive, Affective, and Psycho-Motor domains also tended to steer us toward cognitive concerns. The men­tal processes of knowing, applying, and evaluating arc much more compatible to inquiry/conceptual modes than arc the affective categories of receiving, responding, and valuing. When interacting with students in intcllcc­tuaJ cu~riculum materials, teachers feel a relative security which 1s not present when dealing with their own feelings and those of their students.

In Hawaii the legislative mandate to bring PPBS (Program Planning Budget System) to education has

not facilitated the move toward a curriculum of affect in the social studies, or in any subject area for that mat­ter. PPBS is a system which requires quantification of a variety of clements in education in order to gain more precise indication of input to achieve desirable ends. The areas of human cognition seem to lend themselves to this precision better than emotional responses, or at least at our present stage of understanding we think they do. Answering the demands of PPBS. has caused anguish to a host of teachers und udministrators as they simply struggle to comprehend the characteristics of the system. It is a rare person who would compound his unguish by adding the variables of human feeling to the already frustrating task.

Getting very much attention in social studies curric­ulum is the importance of asking appropriate questions. Instruction in questioning techniques is very evident in in-service teacher education programs. It is generally accepted that teachers arc not nearly as competent at framing open-ended questions as they arc at seeking specific (correct) answers to closed-ended questions. Ostensibly, the sought after open-cndcdness will lead to considerably more divergent thinking and feeling on the students' part. However, when the curriculum is predicated upon cognitive approaches, the net result often seems to be simply a bit more time spent in having the students arrive at almost the same responses they would have given in a closed-ended situation. Often divergent thinking und feeling simply do not occur.

In Hawaii and elsewhere there has been a trend to­ward liberalizing the use of the resource of time. In both elementary and secondary schools the hours spent in the school plant have been configured in a variety of ways to facilitate teaching and learning. Most often the reason given is to allow the student the time to pursue educational options on his own time, thereby assuming a greater responsibility for his own learning.

On the surface of it it would appear that such a trend would tend to enhance the instruction of affectively oriented curriculum and this was undoubtedly an aim of some of those responsible for more liberal use of time. Unfortunately, "free" time in the hands of students during the school day is not what school is supposed to be to many people. It is felt by many that such unsched­uled time causes. idleness and increases the incidence of discipline problems. One seemingly efficient way to sub­vert the idle hands is to channel the "free"· time toward more conventional, acceptable, cognitive activities,

which, of course, corrupts the original notion and essen­tially linlc is changed.

I stated earlier that I have strongly supported the thrust of the "new" social studies curriculum ,ind that I will continue to do so. I have always tried to view any curriculum effort as dynamic and developmental. If, in fact, a serious omission has occurred in the recent social studies emphasis upon the cognitive, I believe the "new" social studies can accommodate needed changes better than social studies curriculum of the past, which was dominated by chronicles of the past. Although it may be true that current inquiry approaches often seem to stifle much needed affective curriculum, it is perhaps the very nature of inquiry that brought on an awareness of a crit ical omission.

Footnotes

I. Silberman. Charles E. Crisis in tlrt• Clussroo111: TIit' R,•111e1ki11g of American £,l11cati1111 . New York: Random House, 1970.

2. Department of Education. State of Hawaii. Office of Instruc­tional Services. Seco111/ury Sociu/ Stml frs Program G ttitle. 1971.

3. /bi,I .. p. 9. 4 . /bit/ .. p. 2. S. Bruner. Jerome. Tl,,• Prac,•ss of Ecl11catio11. Cambridge, r..lass·

achusem: Harvard University Pn.'Ss. 1961 . p. 60. 6. Weinstein. Gerald and Mario D. Fantini. Tow<1rcl H11111u11istic

Etl11catio11: A C11rric11/11111 11f Affi.·ct. New York: rraegcr Publishers. 1970, p. 18.

7. //,jcf. 8. Dennison. George. TIil• Lii'es of C'1ilclrt•11: Tiu• Story of the

First Street School. New York: Vintage Books, p. 9. 9. Gallegno. Caleb. Whut We Owe C'1ildn·11: T/11• S11borcli11ati1111

ofT1•ad1i11g to L1•ami11g. New York: Discus Books. p. 84. 10. /hid .. p. 8S. 11 . /hie/ .. p. 86. 12. Brown. George I. H11111m1 T,•uchi11g for Human Lt•e1mi11g:

An l11trocl11ctio11 to Cc111f111t•11t &l11c11tio11. New York: The Viking Press, 1971, p. 11.

13. Rogers. Carl R. Fn•edom T11 Learn. Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill. 1969, p. ISJ .

14. University of Hawaii. College of Education. Gouls For A Paf11r111anct··B11.ft'd U11dugrad11111e T,•11cher Etlucaricm Pm­gra111. Augusl, 1972.

15. /Mel .• p. iv. 16. Brown. op. cit. 17. VI MCET Co., Los Angeles . Preparing /11s1ruc1im111/ Objec­

tii',•s (filmstrip). Catalogue No. MM24.

Frc111k Brown is Assisl(lllt Prof,•ssor of £d11ct11ion i11 the Depart-111e111 of C11rric11/u111 allll /nstr11ctio11, U11il-crsity of Huwe1ii. H,• lwlds II B.A. i11 A11lt'ricu11 History c111d American Litt•mturt• from Boston U11frcrsity, an M.Ed. i11 Secondary EJ11c111io11 fro111 the Unfrt•rsity of H11ll'11ii. a11d "" EJ.D. in Secondary C11rric-11/u111fm111 /11dic11111 U11ii't'rsi1y.

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