Social Studies skills

Social Studies Skills

Article Objective

• conceptual tools for the Social Studies
• tools for development higher-level thought
• tools for student appreciation and engagement of Social Sciences

These tools provide the conceptual framework for understanding the Social Studies

• students may apply these tools towards any subject in the Social Studies
• >>asdf

Distinctions

• "in distinction is learning"
• a primary tool for understanding the Social Studies content is the ability to distinguish
  • moving students from generalization to distinction is core goal for thoughtful approach
  • student logic and writing is frequently marred by the absence of effective distinction
  • examples
    • "Egypt was unified because of the Nile"
      • this statement makes no distinction between the Nile and other rivers, thereby it assumes that all civilizations along rivers will be unified
    • >> to do>> more examples at higher levels

Geography

Isolation

• details

Movement

• inhibitors / barriers to movement
  • examples: mountains, deserts, crossing rivers, jungles, deserts, canyons, waterfalls (cataracts), extreme climates
  • distance = barrier to movement and cultural diffusion
  • different climatates = barrier to movement and cultural diffusion
• facilitators / aids to movement
  • examples: valleys, going along rivers, flat lands, mild climates
  • similar climate = aid to movement

Regions

• definition = areas of something in common,
  • defined by:
  • geography/ movement, which defines:
    • language, religion, culture, etc.
    • political control
  • regions contain sub-regions and sub-regions to that:
    • USA = East coast, Midwest, West Coast, South, New England, etc.

Natural Resources

• * sources

Climate

• details

Causality

Necessary v. Sufficient Causes

to do:

• short term cause
• long term cause
• mono-causality/ multi-causality

Contingency

• = conditions and choices
• = the idea that things didn't have to happen the way they did

"Packages"

• the conditions necessary for certain outcomes, such as
  • Agricultural Package
  • Civilization Package
  • Industrial Package

Cultural Diffusion

• spread and mixing (diffusion) of people
  • cultures, technologies, disease, religions, identities,
  • spreads more readily across similar climates and latitudes (east - west) rather than across different climates (north - south)
• through Trade, Migration & Warfare

Open v. Closed Societies

>> todo: bring in Mancur Olson and Theory of Groups >> see wiki entry Mancur Olson about how interests tend to coalesce over time and focus on protection of gains, stifling innovation... organizations become "congealed" (from("How Phil Falcone Was LightSnared" WSJ, Homlan W. Jenkins, Jr. 2/18/2012") and resist competition and protect the status quo

Certainty v. Uncertainty

Ritual

• to bring certainty to uncertain events
• rituals can
  • appeal to god(s) for desired outcome
  • predetermine events by acting them out "ritualistically" (such as a hunt)

Divine Intervention & Explanations for Events

• The Winter Solstice marks the sun's lowest trajectory
  • why is this important?
    • that the sun has descended and that it will commence its rise again to higher points in the sky
    • = rebirth, a new start = celebration and deep life-cycle significance
• At the Battle of Marathon (Greeks v. Persians), the Athenian commander (War Archon) Callimachus promised to sacrifice a kid (baby goat) to the goddess of the hunt, Artemis. Having killed 6,400 Persians, the Athenians had to kill 500 goats a year in her honor for more than a decade. (source: "The Greco-Persian Wars" by Peter Green; p. 32)
  • after losing ships to a storm prior to the battle of Thermopylae, Persian king Xerxes ordered his Magi to placate the weather with offerings and spells; the storm subsided
  • Herodotus, the first Greek historian, noted, "or, of course, it may just be that the wind dropped naturally" ("The Greco-Persian Wars" by Peter Green; p. 124)
• Babylonian king Hammurabi wrote on Hammurabi's Code that the laws were given to him by his gods in order to protect the people he ruled (divine justification)
• in ancient world outcomes were explained by divine intervention
• victors in war or power struggles were thought to have been selected by gods (divine choice)

Legitimacy

• favorable outcomes = divinely determened = therefore divinely chosen = legitimacy of outcomes
• unfavorable outcomes = loss of legitimacy
• examples
  • break-down of Old Kingdom pharonic rule in Egypt following reduced flooding of the Nile
    • pharoahs lost legitimacy and social, political, and religious rules were freely broken as result of widespread famine and social collapse
  • Xerxes punishes the Hellesepont for disobeying him
    • after a storm wrecked his boat-bridge across the Hellesponte, Xerxes ordered soldiers to whip its surface in punishment for insubordination

risk v. reward

• social choices
  • social organization
• unintended consequences
• opportunity costs
• comparative advantage
  • examples:
    • farming v. hunting gathering
    • war: Pyrrus v. the Romans
• conditions v. choice

Food <<>> Population Cycle

• in agrarian societies, the relationship between food production and population
• in industrial societies, the relationshiop between labor and economic output
• in post-industrial societies, the demographic strain of aging, population static societies

Scarcity & Surplus

• details
• details
• sources:

Identity

• details
• sources:

Literature & Arts

• links

Social, Political and Economic Structures

Social Structures

• social classes
• identity
• religion
• family
• gender
• citizenship v. subject
• sources:

Political Efficacy

• concept
• defitions
  • internal
  • external
• utility
• Machiavelli on the condept from "Discourses on Livy":
  • from CHAPTER XVI
  • "Whoever undertakes to govern a people under the form of either republic or monarchy, without making sure of those who are opposed to this new order of things, establishes a government of very brief duration. It is true that I regard as unfortunate those princes who, to assure their government to which the mass of the people is hostile, are obliged to resort to extraordinary measures; for he who has but a few enemies can easily make sure of them without great scandal, but he who has the masses hostile to him can never make sure of them, and the more cruelty he employs the feebler will his authority become; so that his best remedy is to try and secure the good will of the people."

Machiavelli, Niccolo; Burnham, James; Detmold, Christian E. (2010-11-25). Discourses on Livy (with a study by James Burnham) by Niccolo Machiavelli, Christian E. Detmold, James Burnham. (Kindle Locations 1745-1750). Unknown. Kindle Edition.

Comparative Advantage

• Definition: A particular economic advantage, resource or ability a country possesses over either its own other economic situations or those of another country.
• Origin of the idea:
  • 1700s Economist Adam Smith wrote:
    • “If a foreign country can supply us with a commodity cheaper than we ourselves can make it, better buy it of them with some part of the produce of our own industry, employed in a way in which we have some advantage.” (Book IV, Section ii, 12)** Comparative advantage means concentrating on what your country is good at making/doing in order to get what other countries are better at making/doing.
  • Ricardo >> todo
  • Examples:
    • Is it advantageous for the U.S. to import oil from Saudi Arabia?
    • Is it advantageous for the U.S. to rely only on its own oil production?

Opportunity Cost

• Definition: The value of the next best choice one had when making a decision.
  • i.e., the trade-off of a decision.
  • Opportunity cost is a way of measuring your decisions: if I do this, would having done something else been more or less expensive? What did I give up in my decision?
  • Examples:
    • If you own land on an urban road, and you decide to build condos on it, what else might you have done, and what would that have cost -- or earned -- for you?
  • Questions:
    • If the U.S. imports oil from Saudi Arabia, is the U.S. giving up the potential of its own oil industry?
    • If Saudi Arabia relies on oil, what is the cost of that reliance?

=== Herbert Stein's Law

• "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop"
• in economics and history, this concept is important for students to appreciate
  • cycles
  • non-linear paths of events
  • change
• Herbert Stein's Law may serve as a good discussion point for evaluating choices in history
  • example: why did such-and-such policy fail over time?
  • source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Stein

Jevons Paradox

• the law that states that increases in efficiencies lead to more and not less use of the resource
• see Jevons paradox
  • interesting historical tool
  • controversial in the 2000s regarding energy use
    • see New Yorker article on subject Dec/ 2010 >> to confirm

Logic

necessary and sufficient

• necessary condition
  • = without which something is not true
    • example: "John is a batchelor" informs us that John is a male, unmarried, and an adult
• sufficient condition
  • = condition is sufficient to prove something is true
  • however, sufficiency does not exclude other conclusions
    • example: "John is a batchelor" is sufficient evidence to know that he is a male

Occam's Razor

• original latin = lex parsimoniae
  • = the law of parsimony, economy or succinctness
• = idea that the simplest explanation is most often the best
• = best solution or option is that which assumes the least variables or assumptions
• origin
  • William of Ockham (c. 1285–1349) English Franciscan friar and logician
    • practiced economy in logicd
    • "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity"
• term "Occam's Razor" developed later
  • "razor" = knife to cut away uneccessary assumptions
• Occam's razor for students:
  • to evaluate opposing theories
  • to develop own theories
  • to evaluate Myths & Conspiracies outline
  • to develop logical thought
    • see also sufficency in logic
• note: Occam's Razor has been used by philosophers to deny any explanations that include God or religion (see "Blame it on Calvin & Luther," by Barton Swaim, Wall Street Journal, Jan 14, 2012)

Heinlein's Razor

• todo
• “Never assume malice when incompetence will do”
  • from wiki: A similar quotation appears in Robert A. Heinlein's 1941 short story "Logic of Empire" ("You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity"); this was noticed in 1996 (five years before Bigler identified the Robert J. Hanlon citation) and first referenced in version 4.0.0 of the Jargon File,[3] with speculation that Hanlon's Razor might be a corruption of "Heinlein's Razor". "Heinlein's Razor" has since been defined as variations on Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, but don't rule out malice.[4] Yet another similar epigram ("Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence") has been widely attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte.[5] Another similar quote appears in Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774): "...misunderstandings and neglect create more confusion in this world than trickery and malice. At any rate, the last two are certainly much less frequent."

= Money

notes to do:

Money & trade

trade = geography movement scarcity/surplus technology technological and cultural diffusion

History of money

“I understand the history of money. When I get some, it's soon history.” What must money be?

- Money must be scarce - Money must be transportable >>Micronesia currency of large limestone coins...9-12ft diameter, several tons... put them outside the houses.. great prestige... but they weren’t transportable, so tokens were created to represent them, or parts of them... Tokens = promises - Money must be authentic (not easily counterfeited) - Money must be trusted >>government sanction >>language/ writing - Money must be permanent (fruit and goats die...) problem with barter.. perishability

“Money can be anything that the parties agree is tradable” (Wikipedia)

Early monetary systems: 75,000 bc ... shells >>scarce and rare cattle crops/ herbs/ spices... specialty crops >>see definitions above, what money must be) Early civilization: spices = currency (crops, esp. pepper) gems, gold, rare minerals Early Discovery Age: Rum became a currency (more stable than gold) In prisons, cigarettes become currency

History of Coinage: starts with the “Touchstone” ... touchstone...rub against it to measure purity (trust, value)

Phoenicians: created currency Representative Money: paper money = coin value Fiat money = back by a promise only

Culture and Cultural & Technological Achievements

• deatils
• sources:

=

Historiography

• using sub-headings or bullets, discussion of the historical sources and historiography of this subject

External Resources

Websites

• Prentice-Hall Social Studies Skills Tutor
• Trumbull County Educational Service Center Social Studies Tools with links organized according to Social Studies areas
• Reading Quest "Making Sense in Social Studies

See Also

• bulleted link to other related internal or web articles
• bulleted link to other related internal or web articles

Lesson Plans & Teaching Ideas

Sub Heading

• details
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• sources:

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• details
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• sources:

Other Student Projects and Investigations

• ideas for student work / engagement with the topic

Readings for students

• Active Reading
  • apply Prior Knowledge as you read: "what do I already know about this?"
  • identify New Knowledge about what you read: "oh, that!"
  • develop questions about the New Knowledge as you read: "Okay, but what about...?"

• links and more ideas here

>> see SocialScience-EssentialSkills11.wpd

• Comparative Advantage exercise: Tuvulo & Nauru comparison
  • Possible economic choices for Nauru and Tuvalu include:
    • phosphates
    • oceans/fishing
    • tourism,
    • .tv domain registrations (Tuvulu)
    • technology
    • foreign aid
    • banking center
    • leaving the island
  • Questions:
    • Is it advantageous for Nauru to produce phosphates?
    • Is it advantageous for other countries to purchase phosphates from Nauru?
    • it advantageous for Tuvalu to develop an Internet domain name?
    • Is it advantageous for other countries to use that domain (.tv)
    • What should Nauru have done instead of relying on phosphates?
    • What would Tuvalu be giving up by relying on foreign aid?

Logic

• todo

• see Anachronisms

>synthesis: Hegelian dialectic: # The thesis is an intellectual proposition. # The antithesis is simply the negation of the thesis. # The synthesis solves the conflict between the thesis and antithesis by reconciling their common truths, and forming a new proposition. wiki: In classical philosophy, dialectic is an exchange of proposition (theses) and counter-propositions (antitheses) resulting in a synthesis of the opposing assertions, or at least a qualitative transformation in the direction of the dialogue. It is one of the three original liberal arts or trivium (the other members are rhetoric and grammar) in Western culture.