Social studies is a discipline that deals with social change and ensures that meaningfully interaction of the recipients with their physical and social environments is attained. It engenders sound education of the citizens, as well as inculcates a sense of social consciousness and social responsibility. Social studies a study that can help an individual to understand his environment, find out the problems of his environment as well as solving existing social problems. It is a study that inculcates the value of honesty, cooperation, and the needs of the nation, as well as the desirable skills to solve environmental problem. It is against this background that mass failure of students on the subject has resulted to several reactions by members of the public. Could child abuse be the remote cause to low academic achievement of students in social studies?

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Studies of student activists, especially those of Flacks (1967) and Keniston (1968), have demonstrated the importance of familial socialization experiences in the biographies of these young persons. Parents of protesters are typically uppermiddle-class professionals of liberal political persuasions, decision-making in the family is democratic, and children are encouraged to develop a sense of responsibility to others as well as a capacity to be self-reliant. Growing up in this milieu is viewed as a natural prelude to campus activism. The idealistic, left-liberal political orientations and nonauthoritarian personality traits of individuals reared in such families clash head on with inaccessible bureaucratic elites as well as with the realities of a society that has failed to realize its democratic and egalitarian ideals. Given the characteristics of activists and the structural properties of societal institutions, protest behavior is understandable, if not inevitable.AUTHORS' NOTE: This paper has been greatly improved as a result o careful readings and incisive comments provided

We report a practical exercise in abnormal psychology designed to give students an insight into social stereotypes. Apart from bringing to life, through the student’s personal experience, important issues in psychiatric diagnosis, the study enables an entrée to accessible published studies in the related literature, consideration of the ethics of deception, comparison of questionnaire and qualitative interview data, and discussion of experimental design, statistical testing and basic elements of psychometrics. Ninety-six newly arrived undergraduates viewed a 25-minute video of a female nurse. In a 2X2 factorial design the alleged nature of the interview was varied (job interview or psychological assessment) as was the rating scale information (exposure prior to the video, after the video). Students then rated the mental status of the interviewee on 20 items and reflected in small discussion groups on what they had seen. Ten items showed significant experimental effects, four as a result of prior information about the nature of the interview, five as a result of prior exposure of the questionnaire, and there was one interaction between treatments. Participants saw the person as less healthy when the interview was said to be a psychological assessment, and more healthy having seen the questionnaire prior to the video. Qualitative data from the small group discussions reflect the quantitative experimental data, the same interview generating contradictory views of the interviewee. Apart from its pedagogical benefits the study replicates previous studies supporting labelling theory and negative bias but also shows unlike the previous literature that prior exposure induces a positive bias. Students wrote up the practical exercise and discussed its various implications with personal tutors.