Centering Hope in the Social Studies Curriculum

            In this article in Social Education, Li-Ching Ho (University of Wisconsin/Madison) and Keith Barton (Indiana University) worry that the world’s problems – political division, mistrust of leaders, racism, poverty, hunger, disease, war, refugees, climate change – may lead K-12 students to be pessimistic, even despairing, about the future. “To counter this,” say Ho and Barton, social studies educators “must provide students a sense of hope – a belief that a better world is possible, and that human action makes a difference.” 

            Implicit in history, geography, and civics classes, they believe, is a focus on hope: “Embedded within the curriculum is an assumption that by providing young people with the necessary skills, knowledge, and dispositions, they will be positioned to help their communities address societal issues and imagine a different and better future.” But Ho and Barton wonder if this emphasis has been explicit enough: “Even when dealing with potentially hopeful content – such as successful social movements – we may fail to highlight its relevance for today.” They believe social studies should embed hopeful content about possibilities, goals, and pathways at a pragmatic and visionary level.

• Pragmatic hope – This curriculum strand would embody the belief that a better future can be attained through strategies that are currently available, with a focus on making a positive difference in people’s lives today. Students might study:
• Possibilities – Successful social movements such as women’s suffrage, civil rights, farmworkers, industrial safety, LGBTQ rights; 
• Goals – Ways to target specific areas of progress in a reasonable timeframe – for example, reducing childhood hunger; 
• Pathways – Understanding strategies that bring about social change – for example, a coalition that made helped restore the Louisiana coastline.
• Visionary hope – “At the core of visionary hope,” say Ho and Barton, “is a belief that the world can be very different than it is.” Looking far beyond present-day realities, students might engage in big-picture thinking about an ideal future, moving beyond conditions that are taken as givens today:
• Possibilities – Students might study how the Harlem Renaissance affected art and culture in the U.S. 
• Goals – Students might consider grand ideals that people have held throughout history – for example, less-exploitative economic arrangements, more-equitable gender relations, greater harmony between people and nature.
• Pathways – “Utopian has gotten a bad reputation as synonymous with ‘impossible,’” say the authors. “Visionary hope must engage students in thinking about how to achieve a different society. Helping students think through how to get from here to there is a corrective to feelings of inevitability.” Women’s suffrage is a good example. 

“Without a deeper and more-complete understanding of visionary goals,” say Ho and Barton, “students may fail to see what it would mean to apply them. And without exploring the rationales behind such goals, students may abandon their beliefs in the face of public opinion or self-interest.” 

            The authors add three cautionary notes. First, they say, “Centering hope does not mean simplifying or romanticizing social change, whether past or present. Social movements are complicated, and their intricacies cannot be ignored in a misguided attempt to make them more inspirational.” The U.S. civil rights movement wasn’t linear or straightforward, nor has it been completely successful. A hope-oriented curriculum needs to delve into such complexities lest we leave students with “false hope.”

            Second, teachers need to make good decisions on the case studies they use to teach about hope – and in the current political climate, some choices will be controversial. “Teaching for hope does not make potential controversies go away,” say Ho and Barton; “dedicated teachers still have to be ready to defend their choices.”

            Finally, the authors believe hope must be central to the curriculum, not an occasional add-on. “Occasional hopeful examples will have limited impact on students’ imagination,” they say. “Centering hope requires consistently and systematically studying hopeful prospects for addressing many different social issues, at a variety of scales and in different settings.” 

            “Despair is central to the thoughts and feelings of many people these days, whether young people or adults,” conclude Ho and Barton. “Schools must counter this sense of despair – not romantically, not simplistically, but forcefully. This means focusing our efforts to provide a foundation for both pragmatic and visionary hope: realistic and successful struggles to improve the world, and the idealistic visions that guide and motivate effective action.” 

 “Centering Hope in Social Studies Education” by Li-Ching Ho and Keith Barton in Social Education, November/December 2024 (Vol. 88, #6, pp. 334-340); the authors can be reached at liching.ho@wisc.edu and kcbarton@iu.edu.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1067 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.