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Abstract
For decades a rich literature within social studies education has promoted the teaching of controversial issues. Now the National Council for the Social Studies has come out with yet another weighty handbook on the topic (Evans and Saxe, 1996). Yet teachers continue to be cautious. Why is this so? This paper suggests four reasons why controversial content continues to be difficult for teachers to implement.
Will someone explain to me what on earth is the use, in a classroom, of any material which is not potentially explosive? Surely the teacher's fundamental task is to ensure not only that...[the] classroom is crammed to the rafters with explosive material, but that explosions occur frequently and with great violence. To shield a child from controversy is to shield him [or her] from the essential material of the analytical imagination, and to render him [or her] incapable of rational independence, logical argument, or spiritual integrity, for none of these things can be achieved without fighting some terrible demons. Any teacher who wished to "shield"...students from such capacities is a gross public danger, and should be exposed to the ridicule of intelligent students and the ceaseless hostility of loving parents wherever he [or she] shows his [or her] wretched sniveling face. There is no such thing as a safe education, and the futile search for it will always be a successful search for moral cowardice, corroding boredom and eternal despair. God save us from such evil rubbish (Gough, 1991).
This catchy letter to the editor of Canada's national newspaper could be dismissed as just another humorous and overstated rant against schools. Though it is filled with naive assumptions about curriculum and the daily realities of classrooms, and though its position is stated in extreme terms for shock appeal, the letter does underscore a deeper historical tension about the identity of social studies. Social educators have recognized for decades that various types of issues ought to have some place in the classroom:
Public Policy Issues. Citizenship goals require the development of student understandings and dispositions appropriate for thinking critically about public issues and entering into the larger debate (Ad Hoc, 1987). Open-mindedness and independent thought are encouraged as young people learn to seriously engage views different from their own.