Editor’s note: This commentary is by Peter Berger, an English teacher at Weathersfield School, who writes “Poor Elijah’s Almanack.” The column appears in several publications, including the Times Argus, the Rutland Herald and the Stowe Reporter.
A Child’s History of the World has been on my shelf since before I knew what books were. It’s old enough that on its inside cover you’ll find my father’s boyhood signature, as well my own.
It was printed in 1936, so Adolf Hitler’s election as chancellor counts as a recent development, but its preface’s stated goal is timeless: “To give the child some idea of what has gone on in the world before he arrived,” to “extend” his “horizon, broaden his view,” “acquaint him with some of the big events and great names and fix these in time and space as a basis for detailed study in the future.”
Sadly, those commonsense objectives have been out of fashion in public education for nearly 50 years. Social studies authorities reject that kind of history “survey” as “a mile wide and an inch deep.” As a result, too many students, voters, and even candidates lack any comprehensive knowledge or understanding of civic or historical fundamentals.
Without a chronological “historic outline,” whatever random stories and facts students do encounter never amount to more than “so many disconnected tales floating about in the child’s mind with no associations of time or space.” That children today commonly learn no more history than that is troubling. That many voting adults understand no more than that is perilous. That schools intentionally teach no more than that is inexcusable.
I’m not talking about every teacher. Many of us understand the value of comprehensive, content-based surveys of history. But the experts who design and impose curricula, the colleges preparing teachers, and many younger teachers who’ve never known any approach to social studies other than a topical gloss on “issues” and “problems” are engaged in perpetuating the campaign to banish the systematic, chronological study of people, places, events, and ideas – call these facts – from classrooms.
As for “engaging content,” sometimes history’s essentials and fine points don’t strike the average adolescent’s fancy. That doesn’t mean these things aren’t worth learning.
Reformers have contended for decades that in the 21st century there are too many facts, and that the Internet means students no longer need to learn them. That’s nonsense. The Encyclopedia Britannica always held more facts that anyone could remember, and history didn’t suddenly get appreciably longer.
The real problem is facts aren’t fun to learn, and fun has been the watchword of American public education for decades. Those same decades have seen achievement decline, a decline reformers helped instigate and repeatedly promised to cure, usually by recycling the same undisciplined, content-light, homework-free initiatives that caused the problem in the first place.
So it is with the “new” approach to history. Reform’s latest guiding document, the Common Core spinoff entitled College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards tucks the goal that students should “know the past” between their need to be “aware of their changing cultural and physical environments” and their ability to “read, write,” “think deeply,” and “promote the common good.”
C3 “intentionally” leaves “content” to each state’s discretion, focusing instead on students’ capacity to “recognize societal problems,” “ask good questions,” conduct “robust investigations,” “communicate and act upon what they learn,” and develop “strong tools for, and methods of, clear and disciplined thinking.” This predominant rhetoric reflects a view of social studies that has little to do with content, and whose objectives, however benign or commendable, are no more applicable to history, civics, or geography than to any other academic or life endeavor.
While C3’s authors concede that “content is critically important,” they dwell repeatedly and primarily on an “inquiry arc” of “thinking, problem solving, and collaborative skills.” They regard social studies education as “experiential,” a matter of students “working individually and together as citizens.” All this is distressingly familiar, an extension of the prevailing approach to social studies that accents social skills, skimps on content, and has left too many Americans starkly, dangerously unfamiliar with their history and government.
Only 18 percent of eighth-graders scored at the proficient level in history on the 2014 National Assessment of Education Progress. Civics and geography scores were only slightly higher. While some NAEP questions turn on fine points like whether the Constitution requires the president to submit an annual budget to Congress – it doesn’t – these results cast doubt on our future and perhaps present ability to govern ourselves.
Some critics propose making high school graduation contingent on passing the test prospective citizens take. Others counter with reformers’ familiar objections to lecturing and their preference for “two-way conversations,” “service learning,” “engaging content,” and social studies as a venue for producing “problem-solvers for the twenty-first century.”
I believe in service learning. I learned it at home, in the Boy Scouts, and in my neighborhood. History class was where I learned about my country and how my government works.
My students read texts and original documents. I also tell stories and lecture because I can often explain what 18th century lawyers were saying better than my students can read it themselves. Then we discuss it in 20-way conversations.
As for “engaging content,” sometimes history’s essentials and fine points don’t strike the average adolescent’s fancy. That doesn’t mean these things aren’t worth learning. One critic panned “typical civics” classes that teach about the Virginia and New Jersey plans, the “dust-dry” proposals debated at the Constitutional Convention. I mentioned this complaint to my eighth-graders. They responded, based on their knowledge, that the debate reflected the tension between state and federal power, and between big states and little states, that it was resolved by compromise, and that, speaking of contemporary issues, compromise isn’t presently something our government does very well.
History is more than a vehicle for teaching students to think. It has its own value and purpose. Students can and should learn to think about that information, but even in the information age, perhaps especially in the information age, people need to know things without haphazardly checking their smartphones. Knowledge isn’t mere information. It’s information you’ve mastered, understood, and carry with you.
The preface of my father’s old book offers one more reason a child should study history – to “take him out of his little self-centered, shut-in life, which looms so large because it is so close to his eyes.” History is a remedy for narcissism. It’s how I can learn that other people, other trials, triumphs and tragedies happened before I arrived.
Sadly, it isn’t only children who inhabit self-centered worlds. They, however, have an infant’s excuse for their narcissism. We’re supposed to help them outgrow it.
First, though, we have to outgrow it ourselves.
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