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[catbrooks]

I don't know how widespread this is in middle schools, but I just learned today that the schools in my district don't have Social Studies classes anymore. Geography, world history, etc. -- that stuff isn't on the standardized tests so they just stopped having the class. Other subjects will try and shoehorn social studies subjects into their lesson

Comments

[cleargreenwater]

Perspective, apparently it's optional now.

[hunter_san]

But history and geography and cultures and social understanding and all related stuff are important?! and and and I'm saying this as someone who failed SOSE (our society class).

What? /mind breaks

[vaekke]

omg :C

yeah, i never had to take geography but i was surprised to learn that some people... don't learn the meaning of latitude and longitude?

AND AHHHH it breaks my heart to hear that they got rid of HISTORY. I adore history

;____________;

i don't understand America

[mamath]

Huh. So. What do American schools do with that extra time?

To be fair, I don't recall having separate History and Geography classes in school in Australia. We had Social Studies, which kind of covered both and some other things probably and then in the later grades we were able to choose our subjects and Modern History and Ancient History were just a couple of the options. They weren't on any of our standardised tests either...

[catbrooks]

Right, we have Social Studies. Or had it, rather. It was the generic class for history, geography, cultures, politics, etc. I remember in 5th grade we did a lot of American history and state geography, for example, and in 6th grade we did world cultures and religion. Ancient Egypt and stuff like that. But that class just doesn't exist anymore. In high school the classes get more specific (American Government, Economics, World History, etc.)

I guess they just make the other classes -- Math, Language Arts, Science -- take up more of the day.

[jamesalesto]

My state (TX) still has social studies the last time I was working in a school about two years ago. Man, World Geography was my favorite class when I was a student. We learned so much about other cultures and our teacher, despite being a coach who had to have a class, loved the subject. It's a damn shame we're cutting it out.