Social studies concepts and topics provide the basis for many of the Lower School’s units of study and follow the Maryland State Department of Education’s Voluntary State Curriculum (VSC). Essential understandings achieved through the social studies curriculum include:

• People create systems to produce, distribute, and consume resources.
• Individuals are links in the chain of human history. (I can learn from the past and influence the future.)  Learning about the past helps to understand the present.
• History is shaped by cause/effect relationships.
• People migrate for a variety of reasons, which leads to the spread of ideas, beliefs, and customs.
• We organize information in a variety of ways to understand and interpret the world.
• Geography influences and affects the way people live.
• People make rules for how they live together. People interact through conflict, compromise, and cooperation.
• We develop systems to help us obtain and distribute resources.
• Key turning points in history affect the political, economic, and social development of people and places.