Challenging Social Studies Education as a Cultural Literate Discipline

This article critiques the pervasive influence of E.D. Hirsch’s cultural literacy framework on social studies education (SSE), particularly its reductive focus on vocabulary acquisition, canonical facts, and standardized assessments. Drawing on crip theory, Deleuzo-Guattarian thought, and decoloniality, the author argues that such frameworks perpetuate epistemic violence, marginalizing othered perspectives and inhibiting critical engagement with history as a dynamic, contested field. Through case studies such as Virginia’s 2023 history standards, the article illustrates how state mandates, collaborative teaching teams, and common assessments reinforce normative hierarchies, constructing SSE as a closed system of predetermined truths. The author advocates for a radical reimagining of SSE, proposing a de-legislated approach that prioritizes relationality, multiplicitousness, and non-determinative engagements with history. This includes rejecting hierarchical structures and embracing practices that center embodied, abnormal, and non-linear ways of knowing. By fostering open-ended, rhizomatic pedagogies, SSE can become a site for exploring ambiguities, contesting dominant narratives, and co-creating social realities. Ultimately, the article envisions social studies not as a mechanism for cultural reproduction but as an emancipatory, communal process of unlearning, reimagining, and engaging with the complexities of human and non-human interrelations in past, present, and future contexts.