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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There are lots of ways to teach social studies that are NOT random whitewashed lessons in US History. My 2nd grader, in the past two years, has learned: what makes a community and how different types of communities may be structured; civics, including voting and other rights; structure of local and other governments; markets and money, etc.  Critical thinking about citizenship and society is just as important, if not more important, as fluency in STEM skills.[/quote]

Those all seem like concepts that are not really suited for elementary education.  I'd rather see more focus on reading, writing, and math; plus a good social-emotional curriculum.  Pushing abstractions without the necessary maturity ("critical thinking about citizenship"??) and random facts about voting and markets just seems like a waste of time.  There's a reason the Common Core includes only math and English.  (PS I feel the same way about all specials, not just social science and science.)  In my ideal world school would be 2 hours of math, 2 hours of english, 1 hr of PE, 1 hour of lunch and recess.  Real music and art classes  (where kids make focused, sustained efforts) can be after school.  [/quote]

I think this is a decent point, but I do think there must be room for science.  Exploring growing plants from seeds, nature, bodies, experiments, construction (pre-physics), animals (caterpillars to butterflies, baby chick, tadpole, something...) is totally natural, interesting, and curiosity-fostering for little children.  Science has the potential to be one of the most exciting parts of the day for little ones.  I am very opposed to making science part of language arts.  Reading about a science-related theme or writing a poem or paragraph about it is fine, but it's no way to LEARN about science topics.  And I'm a lawyer, not even a person in any science-related field.  It just seems like it all meshes very well with the elementary-aged kid's mind and enthusiasm for learning about the world around them.[/quote]

I'd rather have the kids just have more recess outdoors. They're too young to really learn science "facts," and would prepare their minds better for observing the natural world just by being in it.  I wouldn't be opposed to gardening, repair work to learn physical skills, lots of field trips to nature if they don't have access to it after school.  A kid might get entranced by a tadpole in a real pond; but not so much with an adult-lead lesson about tadpoles.  Also when I wrote about integrating science into English, I meant more the kind of critical thinking and writing skills that are the backbone of science communication -- god, writing a poem about science would be the worst!

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