ABSTRACT
Throughout the last decade, federal policies fixated on standardizing curriculum, instruction, and assessment have dominated education reform in the United States. These recent reform initiatives are deeply rooted in the American system of schooling, where the use of local, state, and, more recently, federal bureaucratic structures have been the primary tool to leverage change and increase external control of curriculum, instruction, and assessment. This chapter explores the ways in which bureaucratic accountability systems perpetuate the status quo, depriving students of opportunities to critically investigate the past and explore the social, political, and economic forces shaping their lives. It examines how a deliberative framework and a critical stance can be used to humanize the world history curriculum, complicate the past, and create authentic opportunities to question dominant narratives and critically investigate the world history. The power of bureaucracy derives and running of the organization. A democratic form of social studies reflects the central elements of deliberative politics.
