"Our democracy's vitality depends on...teaching students to be informed readers, writers and thinkers about the past as well as the present." If we want students to care about social studies, we must put reading and writing at its core." (Wineburg & Martin, 2004)
"Next to language arts, social studies is perhaps the most intensively literate of the disciplines.... Both require us to read closely and carefully for nuance--beyond literal meaning, so that we may be wise, wary consumers of language that is so often used for commercial, political, or self-aggrandizing purposes."
Excerpted from Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning by Mike Schmoker