The New York State Council for the Social Studies recently released the agenda for its annual conference, to be held in balmy Rochester in March. Keynoting the event will be Denee Mattioli, president of the National Council for the Social Studies, who has been "invited to comment on the Fordham Foundation report on the teaching of American history." We assume they're speaking of Where Did Social Studies Go Wrong? (http://www.edexcellence.net/detail/news.cfm?news_id=317), published by Fordham and written by a group of disaffected social studies educators calling themselves the "Contrarians," which takes NCSS to task for championing a tendentious and ideology-driven approach to teaching history. Surprisingly, neither Fordham nor the Contrarians are invited to participate. As a survivor of many a tedious keynote address, Gadfly suspects that the good teachers of the Empire State would much prefer a vigorous give-and-take to another boring lecture. Our offer is this: invite us up and we'll gladly pack our snow boots and journey to Rochester to debate Dr. Mattioli. It's one way NYSCSS could prove that it's serious when claiming to be "a market-place of ideas."
"Historian and NCSS president to keynote," press release, New York State Council for the Social Studies