Tag Archive for 'history'

We Need to Be A ‘Water Cooler Nation’ Again

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 14, 2009 in Interview. 10 Comments

America desperately needs to become a “water cooler nation” again, with a common set of cultural references, says historian Richard Norton Smith.  “It shouldn’t be Britney Spears or the latest celebrity divorce or even last week’s box office grosses,” he notes in an interview on the Public School Insights blog, but rather ”Gettysburg and Rosa Parks–and an endless source of possibilities. And I think the common culture, the popular culture, has both a lot to answer for and, correspondingly, a lot to give.”

Claus von Zastrow, Executive Director of the Learning First Alliance, asks Smith if American students are getting enough civic and history education. Smith, a reknowned presidential historian and biographer, offers a weary laugh then replies, “No. They are not.”

And the moment I say that, I qualify it with an expression of sympathy for any teacher, at any level, who is competing with a mass culture that encourages historical and civic illiteracy, if indeed not illiteracy generally. It’s important to get that right up front. No, they’re not. And the evidence of that is to be found in every survey that’s been taken for as long as I can remember….The evidence is overwhelming that we are not imparting to young people a sense of not only where we came from, but, as a result, who we are. And who we might become.

Smith makes a passionate case for teaching history as a means of enhancing civic engagement.  “I have always been bewildered by people who say, ‘Oh god, history, it’s so dull.’ Now, maybe it seemed dull because, to be honest, maybe it was taught badly. Maybe it was reduced to mind-numbing treaties and irrelevant battles and dates. But that’s not history. That’s a calendar. History is the most colorful, dramatic, emotional, inspiring, outraging subject I can think of. It is life. And if we walk away from it or if we minimize it or over-simplify it, it seems to me we’re doing a great disservice to ourselves.”

Great stuff.  The full interview is available here.  A edited transcript is on the LFA blog here.

Don’t Know Much About History

Published by Robert Pondiscio on November 20, 2008 in Core Knowledge and Curriculum. 3 Comments

Pencils out, clear your desks.  Pop quiz!

What ”inalienable rights” are referred to in the Declaration of Independence?  What are the three branches of government?   Name a right or freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution.  Which branch of government has the power to declare war?  And finally, what percentage of Americans failed a test of these and other basic civics, history and economic questions? 

Seventy-one percent.  Yep.  More than seven out of ten earned an F.The average score was 49%.  USA Today reports that of 164 respondents who say they have held elected office, 44% was average.  

Without knowledge of your country’s history, key texts and institutions, you don’t have a frame of reference to judge the politics and policies of today,” Richard Brake, head of the institute’s American Civic Literacy Program, tells the paper.

Take the quiz yourself, or give it to your students right here.  And after they’re done and you’re thoroughly depressed, here’s a link on how to become a Core Knowledge school.

Elvis Is In the Building

Published by Robert Pondiscio on November 7, 2008 in Core Knowledge School. 2 Comments

Hats off to the Traut Core Knowledge Elementary School in Ft. Collins, Colorado, where 6th graders transformed their school gym into a living “wax museum” to show off what they learned about various historic people.  The kids created displays, gave presentations to classmates and with the help of parent volunteers, dressed up as the person for others to see. 

The 75 living wax figures in included explorers, presidents, inventors and entertainers including Elvis, Ansel Adams, Marie Antoinette, Jackie Robinson and Sacajawea, and earned the school a write-up in the local paper. 

The characters weren’t exactly made of wax like the famous mannequins at Madame Tussauds Wax Museum; Instead, they were sixth graders dressed in ornate costumes who assumed motionless positions when given the command. The silence was more representative of a library than a gym, and the posed students barely blinked as younger classes in single file lines walked by the 75 exhibits.

“When a person you know goes by and stares at you, it’s hard not to laugh,” said sixth-grader Summer Paulson, who was dressed as Elizabeth Blackwell, the world’s first woman doctor.

That Core Knowledge stuff…all that deadly dull rote learning and drills.

The Politics of History

Published by Robert Pondiscio on July 31, 2008 in Curriculum. 2 Comments

Lawmakers in California have had a busy summer deciding what students in the Golden State should be taught in school.  A bill requiring that a 1946 court ruling on desegregation be added to the curriculum won strong support, as did a measure that adds the contribution of Filipino-American soldiers.  Legislation requiring lessons on the contributions of Italian Americans, Native Americans and the deportation of Mexican citizens during the Depression are pending. 

An editorial in one local paper makes sport of the whole miasma:

OK, boys and girls, please turn to page 151 of your state history book and skip down to the section on the contributions of Filipino-American soldiers in World War II. We were going to talk about the contributions of the Chinese, but seeing as how that isn’t mandatory, we’re going to take a pass.

Please be prepared immediately after recess to discuss Myanmar’s failure to adopt U.S. concepts of Democracy.  Yes, Jimmy, I know you’re only in fourth grade, but a bipartisan state Senate majority felt California students were getting way behind in their comparative political theory. And we wouldn’t want to argue with bipartisan state Senate majorities, now would we?

Fortunately, we will have time to go over our spelling words a couple of more times this week because the governor vetoed Senate Bill 908, which would have encouraged each California grade level to include a section on global warming.

“They all have merit,” concludes an editorial in the Contra Costa Times, “but it is not the job of individual legislators to alter the public school curriculum on a piecemeal basis. This is the purview of the state Board of Education.”

Fourth of July Fieldwork

Published by Robert Pondiscio on July 3, 2008 in Core Knowledge. 3 Comments

When you’re at your holiday barbecues, ballgames and fireworks this weekend, ask the children you meet the following questions:

  • What country did America win its Independence from?
  • How did America become independent?
  • Why did Americans want to be independent?

Probe for understanding, not just “mere facts.” Feel free to summarize or post the responses here. I’m curious to get a snapshot about what our kids know about this most rudimentary piece of our nation’s history.

Update: Joanne Jacobs highlights a survey from the Bradley Foundation that “questions whether Americans are learning about the ideas that hold us together as a nation.”

A rich and balanced history best prepares young people for informed democratic participation.  There are dangers to certain kinds of patriotism, but there are equal dangers to no patriotism at all. There is a middle ground, “a patriotism of principles,” to use the language of the American Federation of Teachers, based on a “common core of history [that] binds us together.” Americans should embrace an informed patriotism that expresses our devotion to our country and our bond with our fellow citizens.

Enjoy the holiday.

Attention Seeking Behavior

Published by Robert Pondiscio on April 24, 2008 in Educational Policy. 0 Comments

“No fewer than seven bills that would alter how history is taught are currently before California’s legislature,” reports The Economist. “One is a measure about Filipinos. The others would encourage or force more lessons about African and Latin American cultures, American Indians, the “secret war” in Laos, the deportation of Hispanics in the 1930s, the desegregation of Mexican pupils and the Italian contribution to California.”

Each of these attempts to legislate content face an uphill slog. The magazine notes that California Democrats tend to support such measures, but Governor Schwarzenegger tends to veto them. But a larger battle looms: “Next month a group of academics and bureaucrats will begin holding public hearings on an overhaul of the curriculum framework—the first full one since 2001,” the Economist reports. “The coalitions that have been formed to push for legislation will no doubt make their feelings known.”

This presages what a debate on national content standards might look like, but that is not an argument against the attempt. In Bridging Differences recently, CK board member Diane Ravitch noted, “I see a national curriculum as the product of a professional consensus, one that involves subject-matter experts, teachers, administrators, and even end-users of the public schools like college professors and journalists. I also see such a curriculum evolving from careful research on international curriculum standards about what students at various ages are expected to know and be able to do. And I envision a curriculum that in toto amounts to not more than 50 percent of the school day, so that there would be many variations and additions depending on the state, region, and locale.”

We Like Mike!

Published by Robert Pondiscio on March 14, 2008 in Curriculum and Educational Policy. 0 Comments

New York TimesI could kiss Michael Petrilli on the mouth.

A perennial, frustrating blind spot among ed reformers, with their monomaniacal focus on systems, structures and accountability, is curriculum. Trying to build good schools without looking at curriculum is like trying to build a winning baseball team by focusing on the parking lot, the stadium and the vendors and assuming the “baseball people” are the experts on the game. My new hero Mr. Petrilli gets this. Read his take in the Fordham Foundation’s Gadfly on the NY Times piece How Many Billionaires Does It Take to Fix a School System?

“In a 5,000 word forum on education, these words did not appear once: instruction, curriculum, reading, math, history, literature,” sayeth Mr. Petrilli, with the clarity of the child pointing out the Emperor is naked. “This ‘incentivist’ thinking is a fair reflection of the state of the ‘new’ education philanthropy. Staffed mostly by smart MBAs and obsessed with structures and systems and processes, their ignorance about the stuff of education leads to agnosticism. And, predictably, to trouble. (See Joel Klein’s embrace of Diana Lam and Lucy Calkins as Exhibits 1 and 2.).” As Petrilli sees it, to remain agnostic on curriculum and pedagogy is “like sending in nation-builders who can’t speak Arabic and never studied Iraqi history.”

He wraps up with a thought exercise. What if a billionaire wants to focus his philanthropy on smart instructionist investments? Petrilli offers three: Support the development of national standards and tests; create a voluntary national curriculum; and fund thousands of high-quality summer workshops.

Not a bad start. Bravo, sir! Discuss among yourselves, billionaires.

The 10 Most Famous Americans in History

Published by J. Martin Rochester on February 5, 2008 in Curriculum. 1 Comment

The February 3 USA Today reports on a study done by Sam Wineburg of Stanford University that will be appearing in the March issue of the Journal of American History. The study validates what I had to say in my article on “The Training of Idiots” in Where Did Social Studies Go Wrong? published by the Fordham Foundation. The top ten list of “the most famous Americans in US history,” compiled based on a survey of thousands of American high school students (who were told only to exclude presidents) is a sad commentary on the grotesque triumph of the PC (and celeb) culture in our schools and the larger society.

Rosa Parks #2? Harriet Tubman #3? Amelia Earhart? Oprah? Marilyn Monroe? I suppose we should be thankful that Paris Hilton and Britney Spears did not make the list! I am surprised that the Grimke Sisters did not come in at #3 and #4. I can think of no better evidence of how our k-12 social studies educators, thanks to the NCSS and other such organizations, have failed to give kids a sound, accurate, serious KNOWLEDGE of American history as opposed to racial and gender cheerleading.

History Is Bunk

Published by Robert Pondiscio on February 5, 2008 in Curriculum, Research and Reports and Teaching. 1 Comment

“Maybe if we start listening, history will stop repeating itself.” — Lily Tomlin

USA Today A pair of researchers asked 2000 high school juniors and seniors from across the country to “write down the names of the most famous Americans in history.” The top three most-cited names were Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and Harriet Tubman. “Three of the top five — and six of the top 10 — are women,” reports USA Today. “It suggests that the ‘cultural curriculum’ that most kids — and by extension, their parents — experience in school,” writes Greg Toppo, “increasingly emphasizes the stories of Americans who are not necessarily dead, white or male.” According to USA Today, the researchers involved in the project believe the prominence of black Americans signals “a profound change” in how students view history. “Over the course of about 44 years, we’ve had a revolution in the people who we come to think about to represent the American story,” says Sam Wineburg of Stanford University, one of the study’s two authors.

A less charitable explanation is that American students have been so deprived of even a rudimentary knowledge of their own history that it doesn’t strike them as odd to name Oprah Winfrey, #7 on the list, as one of the most important people in American history. Other names cited most often by students in the study are Susan B. Anthony, Benjamin Franklin and Amelia Earhart. Marilyn Monroe, not incidentally, beat out both Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein.
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