Mythologizing America: Interrogating a Curriculum of Belonging in a U.S. High School Civics Course

• In Event: Social Identities and Power Relationships in Social Studies Education

Abstract

This paper explores how myth, as a pedagogical form, enables three high school social studies teachers to express America as a national construct. The paper employs empirical research from classroom observations to map different pedagogical tensions of how the United States, as a national construct in social studies curriculum, variously “has been” and how it “ought to be” in the expressions of the three social studies educators’ pedagogy. Such pedagogy, this paper argues, positions students to belong to the nation as “insiders” and “outsiders” despite their status as legal U.S. citizens. The paper offers social studies educators some theoretical constructs to equip for seeing how social studies pedagogy draws upon myth as a pedagogical form.

Author

• Mark Helmsing, George Mason University