In colonial America, there were not really any “teenagers” as we know them. Of course, children passed through the decade that we know as the “teens,” but that stage of their lives was not the carefree, exploratory period that today’s youth experience. Children grew into adulthood more quickly than they do today, and by the time a child entered their teen years, they were already on a path toward their life’s occupation. Although a youth’s path to adulthood depended on their family’s socio-economic status, regardless of wealth, young men usually learned their trade through some form of apprenticeship.

Children from poor families were often bound out to servitude at a young age, earning their keep while learning a trade. In the seventeenth century, 80% of the Chesapeake’s immigrants were indentured servants. Many of these servants were over the age of 20, but a significant number were young men and women still in their teens. In return for their passage to the Chesapeake, these servants agreed to work for a period of time, usually between four and seven years, without pay. During their service, masters provided food, clothing and shelter, and at the end of their term, servants received “freedom dues,” usually three barrels of corn and a suit of clothes. Many of these youths were orphans, but some were from indigent families who could not care for their children, and therefore sent them off to find their own fortunes. But a young person did not have to travel across the Atlantic to enter into servitude. At the age of 12, Benjamin Franklin was apprenticed to his brother, James, a Philadelphia printer. In his autobiography, Franklin recalled that his brother was “passionate” and often beat him. “Thinking my apprenticeship very tedious,” Franklin stated, he “was continually wishing for some opportunity of shortening it.” At the age of 17, Franklin ran away from his brother’s household.

Children of wealthier families also took on considerable responsibility at a young age. Children from families of middling means often learned how to read and write, especially if they lived in urban areas. By the time they were in their mid-teens, sons were at work in the family farm or business, learning the trade that they would probably practice the rest of their lives. In the wealthiest families adolescent boys were often sent to boarding school, and then when they were around 15 years of age, they entered institutions such as Harvard, William and Mary, or Yale. After finishing their formal education, many took apprenticeships as clerks in merchant offices or law offices, or they returned home to follow their fathers’ profession.

Only young men were allowed to pursue higher education. Although there were a few opportunities for girls to receive a more extensive formal education in the colonial period, most families kept their daughters at home to learn how to run a household and to be a dutiful mate for her future husband. There were rare exceptions to this convention, however. In 1738, when Eliza Lucas was 15, her father moved her and her mother from Antigua, West Indies, to a plantation near Charleston, South Carolina. Her father’s travels with the army and her mother’s ill health forced Eliza to manage the family business. In a letter to a woman friend, Eliza Lucas described her duties: “I have the business of 3 plantations to transact, which requires much writing and more business and fatigue of other sorts than you can imagine.” But, she assured her friend that “I think myself happy that I can be useful to so good a father, and by rising very early I find I can go through much business.” Lucas assumed an unusual burden as a young woman, but eventually she followed a somewhat conventional path – she married a planter and had children, yet she continued to hold considerable responsibility in the management of her husband’s plantations.

Tennessee, as far as we can tell, adopted its first curriculum framework during the 1982-83 school year. Previous to that effort, frameworks with standards were not formally articulated as they are today. James Akenson of Tennessee Tech (who was helpful in putting together this response), pointed out that the curriculum framework emerged at the same time as the "A Nation at Risk" report, which many scholars see as the birth of the standards movement. Those standards were in place until 1996, when they were revised for the first time. In 2001, a major revision effort took place under the direction of a committee of K-12 teachers, state department of education personnel, and representatives from higher education.

In crafting the Tennessee Social Studies Curriculum Standards, the group used the previous standards, the National Council for the Social Studies standards, current educational research, and curriculum frameworks from other states as guides. Finally, according to a representative in the state department of education, Tennessee will begin the revision process again prior to the next textbook adoption four years from the current (2009-2010) school year.

Our resident historian suggests the following quotations. Here is a quote from Milton Friedman, from a column he wrote in Newsweek, dated July 14, 1975, on p. 71, entitled National Economic Planning:

The central planners want planning by them for us. They want the government—by which they really mean themselves—to decide "social priorities" (i.e. tell us what is good for us); "rationalize production" (i.e. tell us where and how we should work); assure "equitable distribution" (i.e. take from some of us to give to others of us). Of course, all this can be voluntary—if we are willing to turn our lives over to them. Otherwise, "antisocial behavior" must be restrained—who can gainsay that? The iron fist must be there—just in case.

Such planning, from the top down, is inefficient because it makes it impossible to use the detailed knowledge shared among millions of individuals. It undermines freedom because it requires people to obey orders rather than pursue their own interests.

Here is a longer quote from Herbert Hoover, "Individualism Speech," October 22, 1928. Landmark Document in American History. Box 91, Public Statements, Herbert Hoover Library, West Branch,1A. :

When the Federal Government undertakes a business, the state governments are at once deprived of control and taxation of that business; when the state government undertakes a business it at once deprived the municipalities of taxation and control of that business. Business requires centralization; self government requires decentralization. Our government to succeed in business must become in effect a despotism. There is thus at once an insidious destruction of self government.

Moreover there is a limit to human capacity in administration. Particularly is there a limit to the capacity of legislative bodies to supervise governmental activities. Every time the Federal Government goes into business 530 Senators and Congressmen become the Board of Directors of that business. Every time a state government goes into business 100 or 200 state senators and assemblymen become directors of that business. Even if they were supermen, no bodies of such numbers can competently direct that type of human activities which requires instant decision and action. No such body can deal adequately with all sections of the country. And yet if we would preserve government by the people we must preserve the authority of our legislators over the activities of our Government. We have trouble enough with log rolling in legislative bodies today. It originates naturally from desires of citizens to advance their particular section or to secure some necessary service. It would be multiplied a thousand-fold were the Federal and state governments in these businesses.

The effect upon our economic progress would be even worse. Business progressiveness is dependent on competition. New methods and new ideas are the outgrowth of the spirit of adventure of individual initiative and of individual enterprise. Without adventure there is no progress. No government administration can rightly speculate and take risks with taxpayers' money. But even more important than this—leadership in business must be through the sheer rise of ability and character. That rise can take place only in the free atmosphere of competition. Competition is closed by bureaucracy. Certainly political choice is a feeble basis for choice of leaders to conduct a business.