| Sumario: | This article focuses on change in the curriculum of social studies in schools of the U.S. The curricular developments of recent decades have emptied the social studies of much of its former meaning, at least in terms of how social studies teachers viewed their curriculum a generation ago. Never a precise term to begin with, social studies did suggest a grouping of subjects not only related by content but by the intentions of those who taught them. In general, "social studies" refers to those courses in secondary education which examine society of social institutions, past and present, without the exactitude or methodological rigor of the social sciences. Historically, the social studies movement was born of the tensions and concerns of the progressive era at the turn of the century. Citizenship education had been considered an important function of social studies education as early as 1916. The conventional understanding of the new social studies and the course materials that have been developed in other areas of the curriculum has been that they have restored balance in the classroom by reasserting the importance of the mastery of organized subject matter and intellectual development.
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