Despite scholarly disagreement about the nature and purposes of social studies education, the most widely adopted elementary social studies textbook series tend to be remarkably uniform, consisting of compendia of facts organized within the expanding communities curriculum structure. Content selection and explication tend to be guided primarily by…

Educators tend to view curriculum integration as an obviously good idea and thus adopt an attitude of "the more integration, the better." However, the analysis of elementary social studies presented in this report indicates that many of the activities suggested in the name of integration either: (1) lack educational value in any subject or (2)…