social studies

Educational curricula at the elementary and sometimes high school levels in the United States that seek to promote civic competence by integrating the social sciences with the humanities. Whereas the social sciences seek to quantify and categorize information about the human condition into data sets and tables, for example by concentrating on the intersection of politics, economics, and demographics in a specific time and place, the humanities focus on qualitative aspects of human culture, such as philosophy, history, and literature. By bringing social studies and the humanities together, it was believed that a young person would be inculcated with the knowledge and resulting aspiration to function as a positively contributing member to society. Because for many years both the social sciences and the humanities retained blind spots relative to class, racialization, gender, sexuality, and ability, social studies focused on the development and improvement of a universal type that was, by default, a white male citizen who belonged to the middle class.