The White House recently launched several ambitious initiatives to strengthen the teaching of history and civics in U.S. schools. Multiple federal agencies - including the Humanities Endowment, Education Department and Corporation for National and Community Service - are seeking to boost the civic understanding and historical knowledge of young Americans and to nudge schools and educators into doing a better job in this key area. A White House "summit" is slated for early 2003. Members of Congress, too, have been agonizing about how Washington can help foster civic education. [See "President Introduces History & Civic Education Initiatives," White House, September 17, 2002 and "President Announces New Guidebook to Help Bring Service Programs to Schools," Corporation for National and Community Service, September 17, 2002.]
Part of the impetus for all this attention arises from heightened concern about civics and patriotism in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Part comes from the Bush administration's desire to encourage young (and older) people to engage in service to others. Part comes from the impulse to strengthen individual and national character and the understanding that this is inextricably linked to one's understanding of one's country, its polity and its past. And part stems from several rounds of dismal NAEP results and other evidence that young Americans know perilously little about their world, their nation's past and their government.
All true, all troubling and all in need of urgent attention. But how much can Washington do in this area? Key curricular decisions - graduation requirements, textbook selections, scopes and sequences, etc. - are made by states and districts. Essential decisions about teacher qualifications are made by states and hiring decisions by districts. (It's well known that history is one of the fields where U.S. students are most apt to encounter teachers who didn't major - or even minor - in the subject, because in nearly every state one can get certified as a social studies teacher by taking courses in any of the social sciences, such as psychology and sociology.)
Indeed, Uncle Sam has exacerbated the problem, albeit unintentionally. If one believes that "what gets tested is what gets taught," one must conclude that No Child Left Behind - with its strong emphasis on reading, math and, in time, science - will cause schools to reduce their attention to other subjects. Because NCLB places so much external scrutiny (from elected officials, top school administrators, business leaders, editorial writers, NAEP results, etc.) upon those three subjects on which schools, districts and states are to be held accountable and compared, other parts of the curriculum are more apt to be consigned to the tender mercies of their own experts. And if ever there was a field in which it's risky to trust the experts, social studies is it. Worse, the National Assessment Governing Board, pressed to find the resources to fully test reading and math more often, recently moved to delay the next cycle of NAEP history and civics assessments, meaning that this influential source of objective evidence - and external scrutiny - will also slacken. (World history and civics will next be assessed in 2006, U.S. history and geography not until 2010.)
Neither are states doing well on their own. When the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation examined their academic standards in 2000, we found just three states that deserved "A" grades in history and seven in geography. Veteran history education expert (and historian) Paul Gagnon recently examined 48 state social studies standards (Iowa and Rhode Island don't have any) and reports that most of them are inadequate, "either overstuffed [with hundreds of specifics] or they are too vague and general." ["Educators Urged to Bring History Alive," by Kathleen Kennedy Manzo, Education Week, October 16, 2002] Another recent reviewer of state social studies standards estimates that only a quarter of them are good and just three or four truly praiseworthy. Thus the overwhelming majority of U.S. children attend school in states where even the official statement of what SHOULD be learned in this area lacks suitable content and rigor. Nor is setting standards the end of the matter. Virginia is one state that developed solid standards, yet the recent rise in its social studies test results is attributable to a lowered passing score, not to improved pupil learning. Massachusetts, too, did a fine job with its standards several years back but is now embroiled in controversy over their revision.
To be sure, social studies is the most fractious of subjects, the one that evokes the most intense and selfish energies of interest groups (racial, national, religious, gender, etc.), each determined to ensure that its part of the story gets generously told and that nothing gets said or even hinted about it that might cause students to do other than revere it. This twin concern with group representation and admiration feeds into the bulking up of textbooks, the politically-correct-kitchen-sink version of standards, and the eradication from the curriculum of everything that's lively, provocative, judgmental or controversial - which means erasing just about everything that kids find interesting and are keen to learn.
That's one reason elected officials and other policy makers commonly back away from direct engagement with the social studies curriculum even as they devise more make-nice programs that, they insist, will strengthen student learning in this field. The result of their backing away, however, is to strengthen the profession's own grip over what gets taught, studied and learned.
And that's not good, considering how many social studies experts believe that, so long as a youngster practices niceness and multiculturalism and feels good about himself, their subject has done its job. They show scant interest in the meat of history, geography and civics. They poke fun at "mere facts and dates" and gush with constructivist zeal about "learning to think like an historian." They fret about "privileging" America in a diverse world, overemphasizing what's good about the nation's past, neglecting its misdeeds and mishaps. As David Gelernter recently wrote of Europe's tendency toward appeasement in foreign policy, they're in the grip of "a Weltanschauung, an entire philosophical worldview that teaches the blood-guilt of Western man, the moral bankruptcy of the West, and the outrageousness of Western civilization's attempting to impose its values on anyone else."
This worldview was on display in the curricular and pedagogical guidance that mainstream education groups (including the National Council for the Social Studies) pumped out after the 9/11/01 attacks and during the run-up to the first "anniversary" of that awful day. When the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation reviewed that guidance, we were dismayed by its neglect of real history, geography and civics, not to mention patriotism. We were disheartened by its overemphasis on tolerance, relativism, pluralism and feeling good about oneself. With the help of some real experts, we offered an alternative perspective for educators and policymakers. [See "September 11: What Our Children Need to Know," Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, September 2002] We were pleased when many readers thanked us for this.
Yet it was also clear that the troubling 9/11 guidance is but the tip of an immense iceberg. That iceberg is the underlying social studies curriculum itself and the views about it that are held by many of the field's opinion shapers, textbook writers, standards crafters and teacher educators. This is a key subject that begs to be snatched away from its own experts and restored to the sound impulses and decent values that dwell in the hearts of most ordinary Americans. One wishes the feds well in their endeavors in this area, but - short of adding social studies to No Child Left Behind and boosting its NAEP frequency - it's hard to see how Uncle Sam can do much to turn around the bleak situation that now envelopes this vital corner of K-12 education.
