History Lost

Ms. Cornelius has a wonderful post about the declining importance of history education in our schools. First she posts some paragraphs of this David McCullough profile in the Salt Lake Tribune:

Those who believe America is facing its darkest and most dangerous time since Sept. 11 are only showing their lack of knowledge of history, according to acclaimed historical writer David McCullough.

"There was no simpler time," he told a sold-out audience at Layton High School as part of Davis County's Davis Reads program. "It's a form of our present-day hubris."

McCullough, who has won two Pulitzer prizes and has written books about the Revolutionary War and influential presidents such as John Adams, Theodore Roosevelt and Harry Truman, encouraged people to instill in their children and grandchildren a sense of history.

"History is the exploration of character," he said. "We're not doing a good job of teaching history to our children and grandchildren for the past 25 years, and we've got to do something about it."

While teachers are the "most important people in our society," he said families can not let the teaching burden fall solely on them.

"The problem is us. We have to take part," he said.

He worries that a lack of historical knowledge will result in poor leaders for the future, as the great leaders of the past steeped themselves in history.

Ms. Cornelius then follows with this:

History education is citizenship education. It is greatly troubling that it is being sacrificed, particularly in this time when we talk about a war on terrorism, for just one instance, but our students can have no idea who the terrorists are or where they came from or why they target western countries such as the United States. What is the record of the United States when it comes to supporting democracy in the Middle East? What does democracy mean? Where did it originate? How role has Iran played in world history, both in the distant and the more recent past? What caues impel the growth of terrorism? What military tactics do terrorists use? How has modern technology made fighting terrorism both more difficult and easier?

Or, closer to home: Who was the Baron de Montesquieu, and what impact did his theories have upon the structure of the US government? What does "checks and balances" mean? What are civil liberties? Why is there tension between liberty and security? What is the title of the head of the Department of Justice? What is executive privilege? What is the history of executive privilege? When was the Department of Veteran's Affairs created? What countries in the world have the most untapped reserves of petroleum?

These are all questions that history education should, indeed MUST to create an informed and involved citizenry which can hold government accountable by demanding that it be "of the people, by the people, and for the people." That promise is meaningless if the people are mired in ignorance.

The problem that Ms. Cornelius and many other passionate educators fret about stems from NCLB, but also from other problems as well.

NCLB's laser like focues on reading and math skills is understandable, mostly since those are the easiest, most objective skills to teach and test. But one thing that Congress and most of the public has forgotten is that these skills are designed to aid a student in learning actual knowledge in other areas, for example, history, or science, or the arts. But testing is not designed to measure those, so predicatbly they don't get taught.

Another reason for the focus on skills rather than knowledge is that people look at history and other concepts from a bias, they are somewhat subjective. Of course, facts are facts, like George Washington was Commander in Chief of the Army prior to becoming president and the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4. But the knowledge and leadership of which McCullough speaks is more related to understanding root causes and progressions of events and trends. These are skills and knowledge that calls for a certain amount of judgment, view point and yes, political bias. And heaven forbid if we have "political bias" in our schools!!

But a larger problems stems from school governance struture. The Federal government mandated certain performance goals (whether they are achievable is beside the point in this case). Under the federal law, states get to choose the mode of testing within certain parameters, so the state chooses the test. But school curricula is still largely a matter of local law. You get this massive disconnect between what is being measured and what is supposed to be taught.

It is not at all surprising that what is being taught is what is being tested. Start testing historical knowledge and you will start seeing history taught. But that is actually the wrong way to go about the matter. We must first decide what should be taught and then, and only then, should we designed a curriculum that will provide that teaching and finally tests that will measure the success of learning. But happened with NCLB was a little backward. We decided on a goal, which is fine, but then short-cutted straight to measurement.

Congress now has an opportunity to fix it, but I suspect too many political deals will be done in order to "pass" a reauthorization without any real improvement. David McCullough will not be happy, neither will Ms. Cornelius and nor will I.