According to the California State Board of Education, the purpose of the Social Science programs in secondary education is as follows:

       The years of early adolescence have been termed a watershed in the development of students’ political and historical thought.1 Students who at age twelve are only beginning to be able to entertain abstract historical or political ideas or reasoning processes will normally, by age sixteen, have the capacity to engage in analytical thought that is “recognizably adult.” This change does not emerge full-blown nor, once under development, is it consistently displayed. High school teachers, just as those in junior high schools, must recognize the continuing need of many students for concrete illustrations and instructional approaches if they are to understand and relate to these political and historical studies. However, the secondary school curriculum must provide learning opportunities that challenge students’ growing abstract analytical thinking capabilities if high school students are to be helped to develop these skills.

       These more abstract reasoning skills emerge with the adolescent’s development of formal thought. Formal thought allows students to develop abstract understanding of historical causality—the often complex patterns of relation-ships between historical events, their multiple antecedents, and their consequences considered over time. Formal thought also allows students to grasp the workings of political and social systems as systems and to engage in higher levels of policy analysis and decision making. In addition, formal thought permits students to deepen and extend their understanding of the more demanding civic learnings: understanding, for example, political conflict in a free society and its resolution under law; understanding the fundamental substantive and procedural values guaranteed by the Constitution; and understanding the close and reciprocating relationships between society and the law within a nation whose Constitution is a charter of principles, not a Napoleonic code.
       In this curriculum these advanced historical, political, and civic learnings and advanced critical thinking skills are developed in grades nine through twelve.
      
The McFarland High School Social Studies Department is dedicated to insuring that our students achieve the skills that will make them active citizens in the future through our World History, United States History, Government, and Economics courses.