A Current Events Response by National Council for the Social Studies

March 3, 2022

Social studies educators are no strangers to teaching about invasions, wars, territorial disputes, and aggressions that lead to intense suffering, human rights violations, civil unrest, and conflicts, resulting in immense costs to human civilization. As educators, we seek to help our students understand past conflicts and human rights issues in order to be active participants in civic life. Such participation means that our students are prepared to take informed action and collaborate, communicate, be inclusive, and lead, so that the dignity, safety, security, and value of all humanity is a goal within their reach. 

National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) is appalled by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the resulting humanitarian crisis. Once again, peace and human rights are violated and threatened, when the lessons of humanity’s past should be teaching us that war and aggression only serve to weaken and divide us.
 
NCSS asks that all educators—and especially social studies educators—be given the wide latitude and resource support needed to address the Russian invasion of Ukraine appropriately, carefully, and in instructionally sound ways. Throughout history, as major turning points and conflicts have unfolded slowly or quickly, locally or globally, students have consistently come to class wanting to inquire: “How did this happen? How can we solve this?” As humanitarian crises like the invasion of Ukraine unfold in real time, please support the educators in your community in their crucial roles of facilitating classroom discussion to build civic discourse and historical understanding. Advocate for additional instructional resources to help teachers ask and answer compelling questions about this devastating invasion and its likely repercussions. 

We stand in solidarity with all who are displaced, who have lost educational opportunities, and are in life-threatening situations in Ukraine. Social studies educators stand ready to help to prepare our students for the kind of active civic engagement necessary to strive toward a more just, equitable, and inclusive society for all people worldwide.