Joe Enge, an 11th grade U.S. history teacher at Carson High School in Carson City, Nev., says his district is trying to get rid of him because he disobeyed orders to stop teaching most of what happened in his country before 1865.
Mary Pierczynski, superintendent of the Carson City schools, says that is nonsense. She says she is treating Enge as she would any teacher with a series of unsatisfactory classroom evaluations. She says her district prefers a relatively quick review of America through the Civil War at the beginning of 11th grade, and it covers that period more extensively in the eighth, 10th and 12th grades.
I understand that it appears to be difficult to teach the entirety of American history in one year (although I am not sure why), punishing a teacher for teaching too much seems extreme.
Enge says he is also in trouble because Carson High Principal Fred Perdomo favors the progressive approach to teaching -- an emphasis on how to find facts rather than memorizing content, with projects to keep students involved and interested. Enge says he is a traditionalist who thinks learning names, dates and events is important.
This philosophical difference, at the heart of many American curriculum fights, is confirmed by a copy Enge sent me of Perdomo's April 22 negative evaluation of Enge's teaching. "I explained," Perdomo says in the evaluation, "that it is impossible to teach all of the content on any history. That is why we have reference books and texts. It is his job to teach the students how to find the content, and then to analyze and apply that content."
Admittedly, teh ability to conduct thoughtful and effective research is an important skill, but I still fail to understand why all of American history cannot be taught in a year. Let us think about a the same segmentation as a freshmen history course at a typical university.
The same segmentation exists, U.S. History to 1865 and U.S. History post-1865. each class at the college is taught in one semester, generally consisting of 2-3 session a week of 1 to 1.5 hours each, or 3-4.5 hours per week class time. Figure an additional 4-7.5 hours of reading a week or a total class/prep time of 7-12 hours a week. The college semester runs for 16 weeks on average. Total class/prep time per semester is 112-192 hours. Doubled for the two classes in the sequence you get 224-384 hours of work.
A typical high school class is about 1 hour a day (give or take), thus 5 hours a week. Figure another 3-5 hours of prep time for reading, etc. you get 8 hours a week work time. For a 36 week school year, you get 288 hours of time, which falls in the middle of hte collegiate range. I remain at a loss why it takes twice as much time to teach the same material
But Mathews makes a much better point at the end of his article:
Have you figured out yet what is missing from this debate? To me, it is a measure of how well Enge's students are learning history and how that compares to students who have been taught the district's way. Some states, such as Virginia, have standardized U.S. history tests, the work of hundreds of teachers who decide which themes and issues are most important. But Nevada doesn't have anything like that, and only students who choose to take the AP or SAT subject tests have an independent check of how well they have been taught.
The one factor that should lead to whether Enge is an effective teacher has not been discussed because there is no way to judge. So, this fight is really about teaching styles and curricula and not about students. A shame.
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