Many educators now see the transformation of history into social studies as the root of what’s wrong. Social studies began in the 1930s as an effort to make the subject more “relevant.” Paul Hanna, its original champion, wrote that children were failing to “face the realities of this world in which we live—they escape, they retreat to a romantic realm of yesterday.” Social studies flowered fully in the 1960s and 1970s, when such romantic stories and legends were frequently replaced in the lower grades by studying family and neighborhood life. In higher grades, social studies came to mean an interdisciplinary approach that threw history into an academic stew with psychology, anthropology, ethnic studies, civics, and other subjects. The “romantic realm” Hanna denigrated turns out to have a narrative thrust and natural appeal far more memorable than soupy sociology. “Kids like history because it’s the story of real people,” says Elaine Reed of the Ohio-based Bradley Commission, which helps states reform their history programs. As a practical matter in elementary school, there’s just not enough time in the day to make history separate from civics, community issues and similar topics, but the aim should be for history and geography to play a larger role in that mix. From junior high on, it makes more sense to define the subject as history. Otherwise, schools are providing “escape hatches for uninterested students to satisfy their diploma requirements.” When psychology or anthropology or even driver’s education classes count as social studies, it’s no wonder so many students don’t know anything about the Civil War.