Posted on 10/21/2003 12:37:33 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Pop quiz: Which description best fits Thomas Jefferson?
A. Founding Father; third president of the United States elected in 1800; and author of the Declaration of Independence, adopted in 1776.
B. Statesman, author, inventor, architect, but also slaveholder and member of the landowning elite.
The answer depends on whom you are asking.
History students are more likely to answer A. Social studies students would gravitate toward B.
The hypothetical test question illustrates two approaches that are fighting for prominence in schools around the country. Traditional history classes would pay more attention to Jefferson's leadership, carefully placed within a framework of dates. Social studies classes, however, are more likely to study Jefferson as a multifaceted individual, with his position of wealth and privilege coming under the microscope.
At the core lie two distinct views of education. History advocates insist on a return to traditional instruction, while opponents assert that students need context. What the argument hides is a basic agreement that schools need to do a better job of teaching history. But neither side seems prepared to listen to the other.
In recent years, the issue has taken on added urgency. Standardized testing in math and English has forced many school districts to spend less time and money on both history and social studies. Research grants are dwindling. Recent reports on the lack of knowledge of history and civics among US students have grabbed headlines.
But if concerns have heightened about the quality of social studies and history instruction, the debate about what should be taught and how is hardly new.
Once upon a time, history was a staple in US public school curricula. But social studies became popular starting in the 1960s, inspired by the work of Charles Beard, an early 20th-century social reformer and Columbia University professor.
Social studies was supposed to remedy rote learning by encouraging an interdisciplinary approach. After all, Professor Beard pointed out, history didn't occur in a vacuum. The varied perspectives of economics, geography, sociology, anthropology, and current events would add meaning and relevance to history, or so the theory went.
In many schools, social studies were adopted for younger grades, seen as a softer study, preparing preteens for the more rigorous study of history in high school.
But in the view of some, a certain fuzziness crept into the field with the social studies approach and has been corrupting history classes ever since.
History advocates sputter at the mention of social studies, a field they see as too touchy-feely and lacking in rigor. But those who favor social studies blanch at what they see as an attempt to drive history back into the territory of rote learning.
But arguments about rigor or the lack thereof sometimes conceal another, deeper disagreement. It's an ancient conundrum: whether the purpose of education is to transmit the culture or transform it. Traditional history advocates say that learning history should enable one to join the culture, to participate as a citizen. A more liberal view deems the teaching of history a stepping- stone to improving society.
Lately, the rhetoric has grown hostile. Social studies teachers "have contempt for history," says Will Fitzhugh, who directs the National History Club.
"More than half of them didn't take history to begin with," he says. "The old joke that social studies is taught by athletic coaches is still sadly true in many places."
Stephen Thornton, a professor of social studies and education at Columbia University's Teachers College, says the attack on his profession is unfounded. "What do they think we're teaching if it's not history? The problem is that they want a particular kind of history - their version."
He continues, "They want a return to the Eisenhower era, a time when there was less open dissent in society."
History advocates such as Chester Finn at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation say that some consensus is needed on what kids learn.
"Social studies is peddling bad stuff," he says. "It's teaching kids that democracy is deeply flawed, and that America's evils exceed its virtues."
The foundation recently published a collection of essays, "Where Did Social Studies Go Wrong?," that lay out a mission to re-instill appreciation for American government. The implication: Kids who know how government works will grow into good citizens who vote and support the US government.
Patriotic duty to know history
Studying key documents such as the US Constitution is essential, says Nishant Mehta, who teaches history to middle schoolers at St. Alcuin Montessori in Dallas.
"The students have to ask: 'When I grow up, what rights will I have as a citizen?' " he says.
Mr. Mehta, who emigrated from India as a teenager, speaks strongly about the obligations of living in a democracy, something he imparts to his students.
Professor Thornton says students of history learn to recognize multiple viewpoints and realize that objectivity is an illusion. They apply more critical thinking to national politics, and are less likely to accept what leaders say at face value.
While such students are generally more interested in national and world events, this doesn't automatically translate into participation in the democratic process. Surveys have not shown a direct correlation between the study of history and higher rates of voting, for example.
If there's no guarantee that history classes will turn out card-carrying voters, then what is all the fuss about?
Dr. Finn and others are concerned that history is being reduced to anecdotes.
For example, if the Civil War is taught mainly through slave diaries or visits to battlefields, kids are missing the bigger picture. They won't know who Robert E. Lee was, or William Tecumseh Sherman. They won't know important dates.
But to many, the solid history approach sounds like a return to the bad old days when students memorized facts and regurgitated them for exams - only to forget them an hour later. Even the most ardent traditionalist today would not argue for a revival of the "stand and deliver" method of history teaching.
"History doesn't have to be boring, just because you're learning content," Finn says.
Mr. Fitzhugh agrees. "Students need to engage with history in a profound way," he says, "through great storytelling, reading books, debating, writing research papers."
"You have to teach for meaning," says Barbara Slater Stern, associate professor in the secondary education program at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va. "Otherwise, the kids won't retain anything."
The dog ate my history book
At the same time, educators of all stripes worry that history textbooks have been "glitzed up and dumbed down," says Priscilla Linden, who teaches social-studies education at Arcadia University in Glenside, Pa. "All the effort has been to get kids' attention. Now it's gone to the other extreme - you can't find the message."
Textbook publishers have tried to draw students in with anecdotes and asides, which makes it harder to find the substance. Even more startling, educators say, is that sometimes a classroom teacher has to consult another textbook or source to get the full story of an event.
Most troubling to historians like Fitzhugh is the notion that children are interested only in things that speak to their own experience.
"Kids like [to learn about] dinosaurs," he says. "How do dinosaurs relate to them?" It's insulting to children's intelligence to assume they are that narrow-minded, he says. "People do make an effort to learn things outside themselves. It stretches the mind."
The common enemy, both sides agree, is time. The school day is already packed with test preparation and other requirements. To paint a balanced picture of history - in all its broad sweeps and tiny brushstrokes - is a daunting task.
Teachers hold the line
"Teachers have considerable discretion to interpret curriculum for the situation they're in," says Thornton.
This is just what worries Finn and others. They say that without a national set of curriculum guidelines, kids are at the mercy of a biased or incompetent teacher. And they want higher qualifications for history teachers.
Thornton says a history degree solves only one part of the problem. If the teacher's degree is in ancient Chinese history, for example, it doesn't help her in teaching US westward expansion to elementary students.
"Further preparation is critical," he says.
But some say that one danger of the current battles between advocates of both history and social studies is that many of those arguing most vociferously are not classroom teachers.
They are theorists, but they are not the ones standing in front of a classroom of children every day, and their notions of what students need may be more rooted in ideology than in reality.
"The responsibility falls back on the teachers," Professor Linden says. "Until either [social studies theorists or historians] get into the trenches, they just won't understand."
Semester at Sea Program Celebrates 20 Years at Pitt*** The program was among the first to take large groups of students in the early 1980s into mainland China and later, in the mid-1980s, to the former Soviet Union. Other benchmarks during the past 20 years include renewed visits to South Africa in the early 1990s, the inclusion of Vietnam and Cambodia as part of the field component in 1994, and most recently, Cuba since 1999.
During the past two decades, participants have had the opportunity to engage in dialogue with public figures such as Madeline Albright, Corazon Aquino, Peter Arnett, Fidel Castro, Arthur C. Clarke, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Richard Threlkeld, and Desmond Tutu.
A particularly successful element of Semester at Sea's in-port field program since 1994 has been involvement at the local level of area kindergarten to 12th grade students through the Vicarious Voyage Around the World program. Coordinated through the institute in conjunction with the shipboard administration, groups of three to five Semester at Sea students "adopt" a grade school class and communicate with them throughout the term. Personal exchanges during the voyage provide K-12 students with a very real connection to the experiences of those traveling around the world. Items sent home in "culture packets" - a newspaper, menu, map, stamps, or language brochure - enable the teacher to make the international learning experience come alive in the local classroom.
Recently, Semester at Sea also celebrated 10 years of exchange visits with the Dalit, or Untouchable, communities in India. Over 1,200 participants have benefited from these encounters during the past 40 visits.
The Semester at Sea program is offered during both fall and spring semesters aboard the SS Universe Explorer and accommodates more than 600 students during the 100-day voyage. A summer session program also is available and accommodates more than 400 undergraduates during a 62-day voyage aboard the MTS World Renaissance.***
Historical Realities
How They Live Their selfish and parasitical Personal Lives
And How They can shut their pig-ignorant, hypocritical faces
And extra points for commie-inspired self-criticism.
It is beyond me how anyway can support that later, and argue that change, or progress, via indoctrination is in any way healthy, liberating, or productive (or whatever). It is called brainwashing.
It's an ancient conundrum: whether the purpose of education is to transmit the culture or transform it. Traditional history advocates say that learning history should enable one to join the culture, to participate as a citizen. A more liberal view deems the teaching of history a stepping- stone to improving society.
It is beyond me howanyone can support the latter, and argue that change, or progress, via indoctrination is in any way healthy, liberating, or productive (or whatever). It is called brainwashing.
Well, the argument will be, you're a conservative ideologue, while they, sacrificing on a substandard wage, are heroically dedicated and doing it for the children.
Yeah, I used to date one of them. Screw her and her mob of marxist bullies.
"just the facts, ma'am" is free of any ideology, whatsoever.
Whether one likes the culture or not (which they obviously don't), the only honest way to facilitate change is by educating people to be free thinkers, armed with information, so that they can then make a decision to follow you to the pollbooth and vote for whatever they want, or go build houses with Jimmy Carter, or march in the streets in support of terrorists, or whatever other looney idea that they decide ON THEIR OWN to support.
I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but all I have to do is close my eyes and envision those lesson plans that my ex-girlfriend used to prepare for her eighth grade social studies class, and I want to jump out of my window. Of course, I'd just break a leg or something, because I'm only on the second floor.
What we need is to get the hell out of public education. The psycho-babble and wasted hours sitting in disruptive, "no facts" classrooms is driving this country to ruin.
Want to learn? Then read, read and read some more. Kids don't. They're spoon-fed feelings about historical wrongs of the U.S.
Time to pull the plug.
It has to be parents who do this but unfortunately, they too were taught under the existing programs.
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