Wednesday, March 10, 2004

The history curriculum debate

According to a recent article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Georgia’s proposed history standards reflect a national trend by placing the study of topics such as the Civil War primarily in the fifth and eighth grades as opposed to having these same topics repeated as part of the newly revise high school history curriculum.

Those who support the change cite three other states - Mississippi, Tennessee, and California - that currently teach the Civil War prior to high school. There is no mention in the article, however, as to whether or not the Civil War is part of the high school history curriculum in these states.

Even so, the real issue is not whether Georgia should join any such “national trend” in history instruction. It is whether or not eliminating the teaching of certain parts of our nation’s history from the high school history curriculum is educationally sound.

According to the article, the proposed high school history standard would allow Georgia’s high school teachers to spend more time in U.S. history on such topics as the Civil Rights era of the 1950s and ’60s, the Cold War, the Vietnam War and Watergate, and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

There is no question that the events in our “recent past,” the last 50 years in our nation’s history, must be examined if our students are to have any real understanding of the political, economic, and societal issues confronting us today.

However, the decision to insure adequate time for these topics to be taught by eliminating other periods of our nation’s history from the high school history curriculum is certainly open to question.

One fact not noted in the newspaper article is that the social studies curriculum in Georgia has long called for the teaching of United States history in grades five and eleven, and in the 1998 revision, some U.S. history strands were written into the fourth and eight grade social studies curriculum.

This approach called for age- and grade-appropriate U.S. history concepts to be introduced in the earlier grades, with a more in-depth, year-long, comprehensive U.S. history course taught in the eleventh grade.

Under this curriculum plan, students in our state’s public school systems have had more than one opportunity to study important events in our nation’s history, such as the founding of Britain’s North American colonies, the American Revolution, the establishment of our present form of government under the Constitution of 1789, and the expansion of our nation’s boundaries from the Mississippi to the Pacific.

Nevertheless, countless numbers of high school graduates enter our state’s colleges each year not knowing which century such Americans as George Washington and Benjamin Franklin livd, the purpose and significance of the Declaration of Independence, or whether the Civil war took place before or after the Mexican War.

Some do not remember that the first 10 amendments to the Constitution are the Bill of Rights. Others cannot name 10 important Americans who lived before the Civil War.

Many have less than a rudimentary knowledge of the events and issues leading to the American War for Independence in 1775, and little real understanding of the forces that so divided our nation from 1820 to 1860 that a great and tragic civil war was waged from 1861-1865.

If the majority of these topics are omitted from the high school history course, one has to ponder just what our future high school graduates will remember about our nation’s history from the Colonial Era through the Civil War when they enter college.

The debate over what should be taught and when it should be taught is, however, only one side of the history curriculum coin. The flip side of the coin is the instructional side, and it involves one central question: how is the curriculum being delivered in our schools and what impact is that delivery having on our students?

Instead of viewing history as an exercise in memorizing endless numbers of dates, names, and events in order to pass a test, students need to view history as a story of the past; a story filled with intrigue and high drama, acted out by real-life characters, including heroes and villains, as well as scores of ordinary folks who have risen to the occasion to overcome the challenges placed before them.

Students also need to perceive history as being useful, which, of course, it really is. History helps us understand how the present came to be, and thus enables us to make informed judgments about the future.

Historical knowledge promotes a common cultural understanding and identity. The study of history also promotes the development of general thinking skills, a valuable skill easily transferable to the real world.

The point of all this is to say that teachers who are passionate about the teaching of history can find ways to link the teaching of content to keep concepts and skills that will enable them to explore with their students all the essential themes in our nation’s past.

There is, then, at least one more curriculum-related issue that also must be addressed. Do curriculum writers, teachers, and other school officials really expect students to remember any of the history they have studied beyond their high school years?

Or does it all come down to “covering” a predetermined number of content standards, administering a test, and assigning grades that will hopefully satisfy the requirements for graduation, the HOPE Scholarship, and entrance into college?

But if public school educators and others in the academic community really believe that citizens today should know the history of their own country, perhaps we should focus on the problems related to the teaching of U.S. history in its current curriculum format as opposed to eliminating the study of certain parts of it from the high school curriculum.

One such problem is the fact that each successive textbook adoption yields even thicker, more fact-packed, history textbooks, along with increasing volumes of ancillary materials that textbook publishers claim will enable teachers to teach the material in the textbooks more effectively to their students.

On top of that, there is an abundance of other companies producing curriculum materials related to the teaching of history that school systems can purchase for their history teachers to use.

Teachers who feel obligated to figure out how to use all of these materials may well experience difficulty in getting to the last 50 years in American history.

They may also lose sight of the fact that learning history, regardless of the comprehensiveness of the text and the quality of instructional materials available to them, always involves three essential intellectual activities: Reading history, writing history, and discussing things learned from history with others, all of which should be done outside the classroom as well as inside.

After all, if students are not willing to take responsibility for their own learning, no curriculum plan will work the way it was intended.

Every period of our nation’s history is important. When taught as a whole, and taught effectively, students have the opportunity to study the past through a thematic construct that will hopefully make history relevant by enabling them see how the accomplishments and shortcomings of each succeeding generation of Americans has helped shape the nation, and world, that they live in today.

The Civil War is important. It was a victory for millions of African-American slaves. It produced Abraham Lincoln’s epochal Emancipation Proclamation, and, later, the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution which abolished slavery altogether.

It is, however, no more important than the American War for Independence. For, after all, had it not been for a thin line of brave, committed American patriots, the nation that divided itself in 1861 would never have been brought to birth in the first place.

The Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s is important. Under the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., African-Americans displayed a willingness to fight for, and die for, if necessary, basic civil rights that they had long been denied. The breakthroughs these committed Americans made were indeed monumental.

It is, however, no more important than World War II, the greatest war in the history of mankind. Had the United States, along with the other Allies, not emerged from it victorious, there would have been no rights to fight for and cherished by any American, period.

As one U.S. history teacher quoted in the Journal-Constitution article put it, “It just doesn’t make sense to learn half of history.”

Glenn Walker

Fayetteville, Ga.