ABSTRACT
Social studies as a subject is ill-regarded by the majority of the students I have taught in our undergraduate elementary teacher preparation program. Most of them have felt disaff ected from social studies as elementary, middle school, and high school students. Th ey have been bored in such classes, associating them with memorizing disembodied, uncoordinated, dry-as-dust facts, forgotten immediately upon testing, if retained that long. One way into changing their relationship to “social studies” is to reveal the role of imagination in the practice of historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and researchers in other areas of the human sciences. Th e activity presented below fosters a more intellectual and imaginative engagement with social studies materials and presents them with a better way of working with their own future students, which can dispel the disaff ection toward social studies.
