You've picked a perfect time period to ask about! To set the stage, for most of the 17th, 18th, and 19th century, formal education generally followed what was known as the "classical" curriculum. Students (generally boys and young men, generally from the population with access to power, likely white) studied Latin, Greek, maths, sciences, logic and rhetoric. The general sentiment was that learning hard stuff made one smart and so the goal was less about learning useful information and more about learning stuff for the sake of learning. This meant there was a hierarchy of curriculum. Math and science were at the top with history and literature at the bottom. It wasn't that educated boys (and sometimes their sisters) didn't study history and literature, it was those pursuits were seen as less rigorous than the content at the top of the hierarchy. In effect, studying history was seen a bit like doing a short run in the midst of training for a marathon.

A sea change began in the early 1800's or so with the rise of the "modern" curriculum. Politicians and others around the world saw the power in having an educated population and this meant figuring out what that population should know. Different countries - and in the United States, different states - followed different paths, but pretty much every system arrived at the idea of breaking students' days into chunks, each chunk assigned to a different subject. This more modern curriculum often included Latin and/or Greek but evened out the hierarchy; now things like physical education, literature, poetry, music, art, and history were seen as equally as important to the development of a young person's mind and their future as a citizen.

Which leads us to 1892 in America (those more familiar with European history education may be able to clarify how their path was a little different.) Part of the rise of public education in the US was the professionalism of the teaching force. There's a whole bunch tied up around gender, but it's safe to say as formal education became increasingly the norm, systems and structures were needed, especially as places settled into tax structures and compulsory education laws. One of the ways to determine those structures was to establish a committee. A boy howdy, did education love its committees. In 1892, the National Education Association convened a national committee to work through what exactly students should be doing all day while they're in school.

Despite the fact the teaching force was over 80% female and the girls were very much a part of formal education by this point, the "Committee on Secondary School Studies Appointed at the Meeting of the National Educational Association" involved only white men, even those representing women's colleges and all-girls' schools. Known as The Committee of Ten, these men were charged with surveying the country to get a sense of what was currently happening and making recommendations. The group spent almost two years collecting information, surveying teachers, and school leaders. Their recommendations, released in 1894, were just that - no one was under any obligation to do anything about them. To that end, the Committee's work is viewed more as a survey of what was happening in that era, more than a cause of what would happen in the future. In other words, despite the claim by some pop culture sources, the report wasn't a defining text and the authors didn't "design" the system or establish the parameters for modern education.

Which leads us to history education. You can read the full report here and the first thing you're likely to notice is that "history" included both what we now think of as earth science and the study of the past, government, and politics. The section on what you're asking about starts on page 162. More specifically, the methods section:

Resolved: That it is desirable that in all schools history should be taught by teachers who not only have a fondness for historical study but who also have paid special attention to effective methods of imparting instruction.

Resolved: That in the first two years oral instruction in biography and mythology should be supplemented by the reading of simple biographies and mythological stories.

Resolved: That after the first two years a suitable text-book or text-books should be used, but only as a basis of fact and sequence of events, to be supplemented by other methods.

Resolved: That pupils should be required to read or learn one other account besides that of the text-book, on each lesson.

Resolved: That a collection of reference books, as large as the means of the school allow, should be provided for every school, suitable for use in connection with all the historical work done in that school.

In effect, they are advocating for pedagogy very similar to what we see today: students should engage in study of the historical record from someone who understands history and how to teach it, using primary and secondary sources, and focusing on the lived experiences of people throughout history. It's worth highlighting they went out of their way to stress that history is more than facts, names, and dead men.

The dry and lifeless system of instruction by text-book should give way to a more rational kind of work ; but our recommendations will have little effect unless they are carried out in an intelligent and discriminating spirit, which will alter the details according to local necessities and difficulties.(p. 165)

By 1918, when the federal Department of the Interior released the report, "Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education" (also led by members of the NEA), the study of the past, geography, civics, and government were now thought of as "Social Studies" and the authors of the report offering a sentiment that is commonly heard in the modern area: Citizenship demands that the social studies be given a prominent place.