The Purpose of this article is to make an inquiry into the history of social studies in the United States from the viewpoint of educational evaluation, taking up the essentialism, which was expressed by the Report of the Commission on the Social Studies of the American Historical Assosiation and some articles written by W. C. Bagley.
According to those theories to evaluate the outcomes of social science teaching is to estimate whether a child understands the society as it is through acquiring the knowledge which correspond with the society. A. H. A. and Bagley regard the society as an objective reality which exsists outside the mind of child. They also regard the knowledges as the outcomes of the disclosure of objective reality, not as the outcomes of subjective reality gained by the child. Therefore the examination does not mean for them any problem-solving, but only review or drill. It can be said that this is the significance and limitation of the evaluation theory in the social studies based on essentialism.