While updating standards is done from time to time to reflect a changing world, content within them is ripe for ideological contestation as it reflects the official curriculum that schools follow; in the case of Social Studies education, standards hold the potential to impact students' understandings of civics and citizenship. Ambiguity surrounding civics and citizenship makes them key concepts where groups with interests can interject their own values through constructing what becomes their formal definitions. Rather than being an outright analysis of the public debate surrounding the adoption of Michigan's updated Social Studies Standards as an example, this article will use the debate to explore its theoretical implications and the implications of ideological standardization in general. After a brief introduction of the predominant arguments, the debate will then be put into conversation with the ideas of social theorists to critically analyze schools and their function in the construction of social order. Specifically, this paper will first consider schools as sites that are desirable for cultural and ideological production, especially in the context of partisan power and social control, and that the debate over what is included in the Social Studies Standards is akin to monopolizing ideological production. Next, it will explore the role that schools play in reproducing and naturalizing particular social relationships; that it is equally important to consider what was not part of the debate, what is not debatable, as these things are intricate, yet ideologically motivated, parts of social ordering. Finally, it will consider the role that schools, often unknowingly, play in supporting ideological framings and reframings of the public sphere through redefining concepts such as the public, participation, and democracy.