Journal review of: The Social Studies. 101.6 (Nov/Dec 2010).
Now this is a style that I'm familiar with! Oh, I thought I'd lost you forever, academic writing. Not that I really missed you all that much what with Teaching History giving me all these great ideas in a new formt, but still, I needed reassurance that you still exist in the teaching profession. Thanks to The Social Studies, I'm confident that I will survive this profession with my close reading and critical thinking skills in tact; Teaching History was so easy to ingest, I was ready for something a little more academically challenging.
The Social Studies provided good, solid, academic writing and research in its pages. There are no diagrams or illustrations, just writing and lots of it - loads of print and secondary sources all culminating into brilliant and beautiful articles that require time and energy to ingest. The essays covered a lot of information and were well worth the read in most cases. The first essay alone covered Spanish history but provided descriptions of French and British history as well. The journal also provides lesson plans and activities for implementation in the classroom, but unlike Teaching History, these were largely reflective rather than informational. That is, they were used more as points of discussion than ideas for implementation.
Overall, I was pleased to discover that academia wasn't dead, but I have to admit, it comes as a bit of a sour loss after reading Teaching History. I liked the creativity that went into that issue, the very creativity that The Social Studies lacks.
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