Revisiting Curriculum Integration: A Fresh Look at an Old Idea

ELIZABETH R. HINDEocial studies as a content area strug-gles to attain a place of prominencein the elementary curriculum. Readingand math continue to reign supreme inelementary classrooms. Despite the factthat the historic national goal of educa-tion in the United States has been toeducate youth for the purpose of demo-cratic citizenship, social studies, whoseprimary purpose is education for citi-zenship, is often relegated to a place ofminor importance in the elementary cur-riculum. Many teachers report that theysimply do not have time to teach socialstudies. Their argument is indeed acredible one. Marzano (2003) calculatesthat there is an average of 200 standardsand 3,093 benchmarks in fourteen dif-ferent content areas that teachers areexpected to teach in a school year. Hefurther estimates that teachers needapproximately 15,465 hours to addressthe content articulated in the standardsadequately. The problem is, accordingto Marzano, that, at the most, teachershave only 9,042 hours of actual instruc-tional time in a typical school year.