Wednesday, April 14, 2004

Public must get involved in history curriculum debate

In recent weeks, several high school teachers and students have appealed to the public to intercede in efforts by the Georgia Department of Education (DOE) to make drastic revisions to the state’s high school U.S. history curriculum as part of its new Georgia Performance Standards (GPS).

Their letters and editorials may have been overshadowed by the groundswell of opposition to a separate DOE initiative to remove the teaching of evolution from science textbooks. While proposed changes in the science curriculum prompted an emotional response from many Georgians, residents and taxpayers should be no less passionate in responding to proposed changes in the high school U.S. history curriculum.

Unlike most others who have written about these changes, I neither teach nor attend Georgia public schools, so I have no vested interest in the new curriculum. But as a resident and taxpayer for more than 20 years and as a parent whose children, now in college, both attended Georgia public schools from kindergarten through 12th grade, I have great concern that the proposed changes do our children and our state an enormous disservice.

The proposed GPS for U.S. history does more than exclude the teaching of the U.S. Civil War from the high school curriculum. This omission, in itself, should provoke outrage among those of us whose tax dollars support public school education.

DOE officials have defended this change on the basis that U.S. history will continue to be taught in grades four through seven. I challenge any reasonable adult to support the claim that children in elementary and early middle school can grasp the complexities of our nation’s most significant conflict with the same level of maturity and insight as those preparing to graduate from high school.

Proposed changes to the high school U.S. curriculum are far more pervasive than the simple exclusion of the Civil War. Two pages in the 42-page GPS draft document cover the entire period between the U.S. Revolutionary War and the period of Reconstruction beginning in 1876. Two pages do not provide sufficient coverage of 100 years of U.S. history to educate students who are preparing to enter the world and write the next pages of our nation’s history.

Admittedly, history is a moving target, and those of us who came of age during the two World Wars and the Korean and Vietnam conflicts want our children to study and understand the factors that led to U.S. involvement in these brutal events. The inclusion of other significant aspects of 20th Century U.S. history - the Great Depression, Cold War, Civil Rights movement, and Gulf War, for instance - certainly is admirable.

I submit, however, that high school students would have sufficient time to explore in greater depth the first 100 years of our nation’s history if the proposed GPS had more meat and less fluff. Here are just a few of the proposed “standard tasks” that accompany the proposed changes:

• Creating a model of a frontier house or cattle ranch.

• Making a list of rules a settler would follow when traveling west.

• Drawing a picture of a home or business before and after the Industrial Era.

• Writing a daily journal of a teen in the late 19th century and today.

• Drawing a campaign poster for suffrage in Wyoming.

• Comparing a picture of a woman in the 1900s and flappers in the 1920s.

• Describing dating in the 1920s.

• Describing the use of television media in the 1950s, including “Leave It to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best.”

• Designing a postcard from Moscow in the 1950s.

• Reading selections from “The Feminine Mystique” or Ms. Magazine in the 1960s, and

• Developing a list of rules protesters in the 1960s might follow.

The list goes on and on. Some of these activities might be appropriate for elementary school students, and they might inspire some great dinner conversation, but are they appropriate tasks to assign high school juniors?

As you read this, DOE committees are reviewing comments that have already been posted to the Web site (www.georgiastandards.org). I urge fellow citizens to take a few minutes to read and comment on the proposed high school U.S. history changes. You can also contact state School Superintendent Kathy Cox (www.doe.k12.ga.us), a state school board member, and Governor Perdue (www.governorperdue.org) to express your opinion.

While the DOE apparently has acquiesced to public resistance to science curriculum changes, little has been said publicly about what changes, if any, are planned in the proposed high school U.S. history GPS. Apparently, we’ll learn only when the final changes are posted in May. Please make your voice heard now.

Marie Powers

Peachtree City, Ga.