On Our Nation’s 250th, We Must Understand Why Our Boys Hate Social Studies
- frankminiter
- Jul 3
- 1 min read
My 13-year-old son’s “social studies” textbooks appear to be written by committees whose chief concern is to dull boys’ minds in order to make them open to indoctrination by politically correct dictum.
Indeed, the very term “social studies” was promulgated by a Progressive Era committee.
“The social studies are understood to be those whose subject matter relate to the organization and development of human society, and to man as a member of social groups,” decided the National Education Association’s (NEA) Committee on Social Studies in 1916. They thought it would be better to present history in the context of social narratives to teach politically useful interpretations.
The bad idea soon spread across the land.
And so boys, now for more than a century, have not been told the real story about how George Washington had two horses shot out from under him in the Battle of Monogahela in 1755, yet still attempted to get the stubborn British general to change tactics as they were being slaughtered, and when this failed, how a then 23-year-old Washington saved what was left of the British army.
Today’s textbooks don’t set the scene to vividly show how Washington rallied a frozen army to cross the Delaware River to take Trenton on Christmas in 1776. They certainly don’t put the boys in the room to show an older Washington wiping his glasses as he made his former officers feel shame for attempting to make him a dictator or king in the Newburgh Conspiracy in 1783.