Schools Fail When it Comes to Teaching History

The Record (NJ)

A new scholarly report by the Boston-based Pioneer Institute raises the specter of the serious study of U.S. history being left in the dustbin of modern, revisionist American history.

Its authors, Robert Pondiscio, Gilbert Sewall and Sandra Stotsky, believe it not at all alarmist to worry that civic and historical illiteracy now poses “a serious threat to our national survival.”

In so many ways that they document, the education system is stacking the deck against the discipline of history. There is diminished classroom time, for starters, with language arts and math the two subjects that are tested extensively under federal and state mandates.

More substantively, history and civics have become instruments for the advancement of social-activist agendas centered on issues of race, gender and class.

With the rise of so-called “critical pedagogy” as a means for calling into question most aspects of America’s founding, growth and maturation, it is no wonder that almost one-third of Americans now believe the Emancipation Proclamation or the Civil War came before the Declaration of Independence.

Those respondents to a nationwide survey done by the American Revolution Center in 2009 almost surely never had courses on this nation’s Revolutionary heritage and the great principled debate that led to its becoming a Constitutional republic.

A long-festering and increasingly serious problem is what the Pioneer scholars term a “fragmented approach to the study of United States history [resulting] from using a social studies framework.”

In that connection, a recent Lexington Institute study of the requirements for becoming a history teacher in all 50 states found that many states require candidates to earn credits and pass tests in social studies rather than showing they have mastered basic knowledge of U.S. history.

Array of disciplines

The subject of social studies draws from a disparate array of disciplines (such as anthropology, archeology, economics, geography, philosophy, political science, psychology, and religion). Proponents argue this multi-disciplinary approach helps students learn how to live productively in society. However, reliance on a social studies framework greatly weakens history’s place in the curriculum and the historical knowledge of those entrusted to teach the subject.

Among findings of the Lexington study:

♦ California’s official teacher certifiers require not one history-specific credential for would-be high-school history teachers. Instead, history falls wholly under the social studies umbrella. While deeming history unworthy, the Golden State does have such credentialing for the likes of biological sciences and geosciences.

♦ Illinois’ test for history teachers is tilted so heavily to social science foundations as opposed to historical concepts and world history that it could be possible for a teacher candidate to answer zero substantive questions about U.S. history and still pass the overall test.

♦ New Jersey offers history teachers certification as social studies teachers, but stipulates a minimum of only one course in U.S. history. Incredibly, even that anemic requirement can be waived if certifiers approve an alternative course from outside a history department.

♦ Even though the Educational Testing Service offers state certifiers a Praxis II test of historical knowledge, the vast majority of states instead are buying the Praxis II social studies test, only 15 percent to 20 percent of which is devoted to questions about history.

♦ New Jersey, along with Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Indiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania are among the states where candidates to teach history are required to pass the Praxis II test for social studies instead of being administered the history test.

Dominance of social studies

The dominance of social studies is problematic, note the Pioneer scholars, because of the widespread use of faddish practices like activity- or project-based learning that are heavily promoted by the education schools. That mindset “often rejects the primacy of academic learning, now broadly applied to large bodies of hard knowledge including textual study of the United States Constitution, Bill of Rights and amendments.”

Reversing the nation’s slide toward historical illiteracy will not be easy. Heightened public awareness of the problem could help. One means to that might entail administering to every candidate for a high school diploma the same basic U.S. Citizenship Test of civic and historical knowledge that immigrants must pass to become citizens.

It would speak volumes if our high school seniors knew less about their nation’s heritage than the newest of our fellow citizens.