STANDARD COURSE OF STUDY

ANTHROPOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGY, AND SOCIOLOGY

People operate governments and economies. Anthropology, psychology, and sociology offer distinctive perspectives on the behavior of individuals and the groups in which they live. These social sciences can provide citizens with useful tools for analyzing the motives and activities of the individuals and groups they encounter.

Personal identity is shaped by one's culture, by groups, and by institutional influences. Institutions such as schools, churches, families, government agencies, and the courts all play an integral role in our lives. These and other institutions exert enormous influence over us, yet institutions are no more than organizational embodiments to further the core social values of those who comprise them. Thus, it is important that students know how institutions are formed, what controls and influences them, how they control and influence individuals and culture, and how institutions can be maintained or changed.

Cultures are dynamic and ever-changing. Human beings create, learn, and adapt culture. Culture helps us to understand ourselves as both individuals and members of various groups. Human cultures exhibit both similarities and differences. We all, for example, have systems of beliefs, knowledge, values, and traditions. Each system also is unique. In a democratic and multicultural society, students need to understand multiple perspectives that derive from different cultural vantage points. This understanding will allow them to relate to people in our nation and throughout the world.

Elementary Grades
Young learners develop their personal identities in the context of families, peers, schools, and communities. Central to this development are the exploration, identification, and analysis of how individuals relate to others. Young children should be given opportunities to examine various institutions that affect their lives and influence their thinking. They should be assisted in recognizing the tensions that occur when the goals, values, and principles of two or more institutions or groups conflict. They should also have opportunities to explore ways in which institutions such as places of worship or health-care networks are created to respond to changing individual and group needs. During the early years of school, the exploration of the concepts of likenesses and differences in school subjects such as language arts, mathematics, science, music, and art makes the study of culture appropriate. Socially, the young learner is beginning to interact with other students, some of whom are like the student and some different; naturally, he or she wants to know more about others.

Middle Grades
In the middle grades, issues of personal identity are refocused as the individual begins to explain self in relation to others in the society and culture. Middle school learners will benefit from varied experiences through which they examine the ways in which institutions change over time, promote social conformity, and influence culture. They should be encouraged to use this understanding to suggest ways to work through institutional change for the common good. In the middle grades, students begin to explore and ask questions about the nature of culture and specific aspects of culture, such as language and beliefs, and the influence of those aspects on human behavior.

High School
At the high school level, students need to encounter multiple opportunities to examine contemporary patterns of human behavior, using methods from the behavioral sciences to apply core concepts drawn from psychology, social psychology, sociology, and anthropology as they apply to individuals, societies, and cultures. High school students must understand the paradigms and traditions that undergird social and political institutions. They should be provided opportunities to examine, use, and add to the body of knowledge related to the behavioral sciences and social theory as it relates to the ways people and groups organize themselves around common needs, beliefs, and interests. As students progress through high school, they can understand and use complex cultural concepts such as adaptation, assimilation, acculturation, diffusions, and dissonance drawn from anthropology, sociology, and other disciplines to explain how culture and cultural systems function.

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