Boston Public Schools to Eliminate History & Social Science Departments

Joseph J Ferreira, Jr.
Network H-High-S
5/21/2014

It was announced today that the Boston Public School department is “reorganizing” by eliminating all Departments of History & Social Sciences in all schools and folding the departments into the Department of English Language Arts as a “Humanities Department” with the currciculum determined by the ELA Common Core Standards.  Certified history department heads/chairs are being laid off and, apaprently, no certified history specialist will be hired to replace any of these teachers. This essentially eliminates history and the social sciences as one of the core academic departments in the Boston Public Schools and subordinates HSS to ELA.  This appears to be the first major metropolitan school district to reduce history and the social sciences to merely a supporting role in the education of students.

As it might appear to be a political issue, I will leave it to H-High-S network members to research this issue and the various petitions, political issues, etc. that are circulating about this matter, but as this addresses a core element of our network’s raison d’etre, history education, I hope this will generate both interest and discussion.