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What is social studies?
From Wikipedia:
“Social studies is the ‘combined study of the social sciences and humanities to promote
citizenship.’ Social studies is most commonly recognized as the name of a course or set of
courses taught in elementary, middle, and secondary schools, but may also refer to the
study of parts of human society at advanced schools around the globe. Many such courses
are interdisciplinary and combine information from various fields, including sociology but
also political science, history, economics, religious studies, geography, psychology,
anthropology, and civics.”
From Education.com:
“Social studies is the interdisciplinary combination of social science and humanities
concepts for the purpose of practicing problem solving and decision making for developing
citizenship skills on critical social issues.
“Social studies is the study of people. Social studies should help students acquire
knowledge, master the processes of learning, and become active citizens.”
From NCSS.org:
“Within the school program, social studies provides coordinated, methodical study
combining such topics as anthropology, archaeology, economics, geography, history, law,
philosophy, political science, psychology, religion, and sociology, as well as appropriate
content from the humanities, mathematics, and natural sciences. The primary purpose of
social studies is to help young people develop the ability to make informed and sound
decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an
interdependent world.”
From Dictionary.com:
“Social studies is the study of how people live and organize themselves in society,
embracing geography, history, economics, and other subjects”
From Merriam-Webster.com:
“Social studies is a course of study that deals with human relationships and the way society
works; a part of a school or college curriculum concerned with the study of social
relationships and the functioning of society and usually made up of courses in history,
government, economics, civics, sociology, geography, and anthropology”
What is history?
From Wikipedia:
“History is the study of the past, specifically how it relates to humans. It is an umbrella term
that relates to past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization,
presentation, and interpretation of information about these events. Scholars who write
about history are called historians. Events occurring prior to written record are considered
prehistory (prehistoric).”
From http://www.angelfire.com/realm3/worldhistory/history.html:
“History in the wider sense is all that has happened, not just all the details of human life,
but those of the natural world as well. It includes everything that undergoes change;
therefore the whole universe, and every part of it, has its history.”
From Dictionary.com:
“History is . . . the branch of knowledge dealing with past events.
“a continuous, organized story of past events as relating to a particular people, country,
period, person, etc., usually written as a chronological account.
“the combination of all past events.
“the record of past events and times, especially in connection with the human race.”
From http://pages.uoregon.edu/kimball/ways.htm:
“Let me first offer a simple definition of history. History is a story about the past that is both
true and important.
“I should also highlight the difference implied just now between "history" and "the past".
History is not the past; it is a story about the past. The past, even our own recent past, is
huge and unrecoverable. History is just a piece of the past, presented as logical story. No
one wants to tell the story of the whole past, and no one ever could. There is only enough
evidence left behind for a small splinter of what has gone on in the past. It is impossible to
recover the whole past.”
What is geography?
From Wikipedia:
“Geography is a field of science dedicated to the study of the lands, the features, the
inhabitants, and the details of the Earth. A literal translation would be ‘to describe or write
about the Earth.’ Modern geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks to
understand the Earth and all of its human and natural features - not just where objects are,
but how they have changed and come to be.”
From About.com:
“Since the beginning of humankind, the study of geography has captured the imagination of
the people. In ancient times, geography books told tales of distant lands and dreamed of
treasures. The ancient Greeks created the word ‘geography’ from the roots ‘geo’ for ‘earth’
and ‘grapho’ for ‘to write.’ These people experienced many adventures and needed a way
to explain and communicate the differences between various lands.
“The science of geography is likely the oldest of all sciences. Geography is the answer to the
question that the earliest humans asked, "What's over there?" Exploration and the
discovery of new places, new cultures, and new ideas have always been basic components
of geography.”
From NationalGeographic.com:
“Geography is the study of places and the relationships between people and their
environments. Geographers explore both the physical properties of Earth’s surface and the
human societies spread across it. They also examine how human culture interacts with the
natural environment and the way that locations and places can have an effect on people.
Geography seeks to understand where things are found, why they are there, and how they
develop and change over time.”
From the Royal Geographical Society (rgs.org):
“Geography is the study of Earth’s landscapes, peoples, places and environments. It is, quite
simply, about the world in which we live.
“Geography is unique in connecting the social sciences (human geography) with the natural
sciences (physical geography). Human geography concerns the understanding of cultures,
societies and economies, and physical geography concerns the understanding of physical
landscapes and the environment.”
What is government?
From Wikipedia:
“A government is the system by which a state or community is managed. In American
English, government refers to the larger system by which any state is organized.
“In the case of its broad definition, government normally consists of legislators,
administrators, and arbitrators. Government is the way in which national or state policy is
enforced, as well as the method for determining the policy of the nation or state.
“Government of any kind currently affects every human activity in many important ways.
For this reason, political scientists generally argue that government should not be studied
by itself; but should be studied along with anthropology, economics, history, philosophy,
science, and sociology.”
From BusniessDictionary.com:
“Government is a group of people that oversee a community or unit. It sets and operates
public policy and exercises executive, political and sovereign power through customs,
institutions, and laws within a state. A government can be classified into many types-democracy, republic, monarchy, aristocracy, and dictatorship are just a few.”
From Dictionary.com:
“Government is . . . the political direction and control exercised over the actions of the
members, citizens, or inhabitants of communities, societies, and states; direction of the
affairs of a state, community, etc.; political administration.
“the form or system of rule by which a state, community, etc., is managed.
“the overseeing body of persons in a state, community, etc.; administration.
“a branch or service of the supreme authority of a state or nation, taken as representing the
whole.”
What is economics?
From Wikipedia:
“Economics is the social science that studies economic activity to gain an understanding of
the processes that affect the production, distribution and use of goods and services in an
exchange economy.”
From the American Economic Association (aeaweb.org):
“Economics is the study of how people choose to use resources.
“Resources include the time and talent people have available, the land, buildings,
equipment, and other tools on hand, and the knowledge of how to combine them to create
useful products and services.
“Important choices involve how much time to devote to work, to school, and to leisure,
how many dollars to spend and how many to save, how to combine resources to produce
goods and services, and how to vote and shape taxes and the role of government.”
From About.com:
“The Economist's Dictionary of Economics defines economics as ‘The study of the
production, distribution and use of wealth in human society.’
“Saint Michael's College answers the question ‘What is Economics?’ with the answer ‘Most
simply put, economics is the study of making choices.’
“Economics is the study of how individuals and groups make decisions with limited
resources as to best satisfy their wants, needs, and desires.”
From WhatIsEconomics.org:
“Ever wonder why food costs rise when gas prices go up? Ever question why U.S. leaders
worry when other countries talk of going bankrupt? Ever wonder why you can’t get a good
interest rate on your savings account? All of these things can be explained through
economics.
“Economics is the study of the production and use of goods and the transfer of wealth to
produce and get those goods. Economics explains how people behave within markets to get
what they want or accomplish certain goals. Since economics is a driving force of human
behavior, studying it often reveals why people and governments act in particular ways.”
What is culture?
From Wikipedia:
“In the 20th century, ‘culture’ emerged as a central concept in anthropology, including all
human activities that cannot be directly connected to genetic inheritance.
“Culture is 1) the human ability to classify and represent experiences with symbols, and to
act imaginatively and creatively; and 2) the distinct ways that people, who live differently,
classified and represented their experiences, and acted creatively.
“Distinctions are currently made between the physical artifacts created by a society, its socalled ‘material culture,’ and everything else, the non-physicals such as language, customs,
etc. that are the main referent of the term ‘culture’.”
From TAMU.edu:
“Culture refers to the combined knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes,
meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the
universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course
of generations through individual and group effort.
“A culture is a way of life of a group of people--the behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols
that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed along by
communication and imitation from one generation to the next.
“Culture is the combination of the learned behavior of a group of people that are generally
considered to be the tradition of that people and are passed along from generation to
generation.”
From Dictionary.com:
“Culture is . . . the behaviors and beliefs special to a particular social, ethnic, or age group.
“the overall ways of living built up by a group of human beings and passed through time.”
From Intercultures.gc.ca:
“Culture rules virtually every aspect of your life and, like most people, you are completely
unaware of this. If asked, you would likely define culture as music, literature, visual arts,
architecture or language, and you wouldn't be wrong. But you wouldn't be entirely right
either. In fact the things produced by a culture which we perceive with our five senses are
simply expressions of the deeper meaning of culture – what we do, think and feel.”