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History, geography, and civics were already established school subjects when the first National Society for the Study of Education (NSSE) Yearbooks were published a century ago. Economics, sociology, anthropology, and sometimes psychology were in the early stages of staking out a place in the curriculum. Other areas of study also emerged that are less directly tied to the traditional academic subjects, including global and environmental education and ethnic and women's studies. Collectively, these subject matters became known as the "social studies."It remains contested whether the "social studies" denotes that the constituent subjects retain their individual autonomy, or are combined for broader educational purposes, or both. Nevertheless, it is evident that some social studies subject matters have secured greater legitimacy than others. By legitimacy, I mean they came to be broadly considered standard and accepted in American education. This chapter deals with the question of why some subjects acquired legitimacy as they did. The chapter focuses on the treatment of the social studies in a century of NSSE yearbooks, especially the seven volumes devoted to education in the social studies, history, and geography. Three of these volumes incorporated "social studies" in the title and two each addressed "history" and "geography" in their titles.Accounts of why some conceptions of the social studies have been legitimated usually emphasize the basically conservative social purposes schools serve, 1 or the press of circumstances under which teachers work, 2 or some combination of these two arguments. 3 What these accounts share, as Nel Noddings once put it, is "what cannot be done with general approval" in curriculum innovation. 4 In other words, curriculum innovation cannot be ideologically neutral nor can it avoid the effects of the institutional features of schooling. At the same time, 185