October 2002
Why Is U.S. History Still a Mystery to Our Children?

Agenda:

2:45 p.m.	Registration
3:00	Presenter:	Wilfred McClay, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
	Discussants:	Jesus Garcia, National Council for the Social Studies
		Peter Gibbon, Harvard University
		David Warren Saxe, Pennsylvania State University
	Moderator:	Lynne V. Cheney, AEI
5:00	Wine and Cheese Reception

Summary:

The most recent results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress on historical knowledge indicate that, despite a slight improvement over the 1994 results, one-third of fourth and eighth graders are still performing "below basic," meaning they cannot identify many important figures, documents, and events in American history. Among twelfth graders, where there has been no improvement at all, 57 percent of high school seniors scored below basic. Our four panelists will take up the question of why this problem persists.

Why has the reform of history education proved to be such an intractable process? Why have we made so little progress, and what can be done to accelerate the pace of reform?

The events of September 11 underscored the sad state of history education in the United States. Although Americans rallied around the flag in the wake of the terrorist attacks, their responses often failed to recognize ideas and ideals basic to our country, with the result that there was a clumsy and halting uncertainty in discussions of the attacks in our schools and colleges. The hard reality is that we have not made any substantial progress in improving our knowledge of American history in nearly two decades.

This lack of serious improvement is strongly confirmed by most quantitative measures, such as comparative test scores. The most dismal study of all was the one published in 2000 by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) aptly titled, Losing America's Memory, which reflected an astonishing level of historical ignorance among graduating seniors at the nation's most selective colleges. It is bad enough for average students at average schools to be ignorant, but when graduates of Harvard, Williams, Pomona, Chicago, and the like are not learning the basics of American history, it is safe to assume that almost no one is, and that there will be almost no one to pass such knowledge on to the next generation. These results suggest not only that we are not doing enough, but that we are not yet doing the right things to turn the situation around.

The best place to begin a discussion of the problem is to reflect on what it means to regard history as a form of memory. This is a common metaphor, employed in the title of the ACTA report, Losing America's Memory. Historical consciousness is to civilized society what memory is to individual identity. Without memory and the stories within which memories are suspended, one cannot say who or what one is. A culture without memory will necessarily be barbarous and easily terrorized, even if it is technologically advanced, because the incessant drumbeat of daily events will drown out all our efforts to connect the past, present, and future. Memory then is a crucial source of continuity. The same thing can be said of history, which is the chief form of public memory. But we do not acquire a life-enhancing memory or a vibrant historical consciousness through the mere piling up of facts. Memory is most powerful when it is purposeful and selective.

What are the practical implications of these observations for the teaching and study of American history? First, the movement towards a greater emphasis on content in historical instruction needs to be augmented by a greater concern with the form in which the content appears. Textbooks almost never provide a compelling, narrative context within which factoids can begin to take on life. In place of them, students should read real books by real authors with a real point of view, a winning writing style, and a story to tell. Second, the notion that we can finesse the disagreements in our culture by "teaching the conflicts" is based on a false or at least very partial understanding of what makes for historical knowledge and consciousness. It is far better and more responsible to teach the American story straight, give students a strong underlying sense of their heritage, and then let them generate their own dissents and debates and disagreements in response to it. Third, the design of our courses and curricula is and must be an exercise in triage, in making hard choices about what gets thrown out of the story so that the essentials can survive. It is always easy to include something new, to add another sidebar to the textbook, but the result has been an increasingly incoherent story, or no story at all.

What all three of these suggestions have in common is a renewed emphasis on telling the American story in a clearer and more compelling way with the selectivity that is imposed by the requirements of a strong narrative. The fundamental need is to establish a kind of connection with the past as something from which we can draw meaning and sustenance, something in which our own identity is deeply embedded.

Our children cannot understand the blessings of liberty, cannot appreciate their American inheritance, and cannot hope to maintain this union, Constitution, and republic without a firm understanding of the fundamentals of American history and the essentials of American government. For more than two decades politicians, policymakers, and interested citizens have worked on promoting American history. Yet we may be no further along the path to historical competence than we were twenty years ago.

Following the National History Standards debacle in 1994, a number of state governments revived the standards movement with the institution of excellent state history standards. Since then Alabama, Arizona, California, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Texas have developed first-rate history standards. Many states have also made great strides towards excellence, but some still lag behind.

How is it possible that we have fallen so far behind while we have made so much progress? We need to connect high-quality standards to teachers in more meaningful and effective ways, providing them not only with inspiration and expectations, but also the necessary training and tools. It makes no sense for a state government to require strong history standards for children, but make no demands on teacher educators to prepare their teachers to deliver that same content. It also makes little sense for state licensing and teacher certification programs to be controlled by special interest factions like the National Council for the Social Studies, whose official policies not only do not promote and preserve American sovereignty, but whose international character is not accountable to the American electorate.

We must question the wisdom of a teacher corps charged with instruction in American history whose training lacks a foundation in this very subject. The average instructor supposedly qualified to teach American history does not hold a minor, let alone a major, in American history. On close examination actual training in American history typically consists of merely one or two low-level survey courses. We cannot expect teachers to deliver on high-quality standards without a strong academic background.

How do we accelerate reform in an American system that appears to have failed to deliver the fundamentals of American history?

First: Ensure that the fundamentals of American history are represented in all history standards.

Second: Insist that the teacher corps presently responsible for instruction in American history achieve academic competence and skill in the teaching of the subject.

Third: Align all American history licensure and teacher certification programs to deliver on the fundamentals of American history.

Fourth: Return all licensure and teacher certification programs to proper government authority.

Fifth: Add testing in American history and civics to No Child Left Behind legislation.

There are five familiar issues that impact the learning of social studies in public schools:

1. Student disengagement with schools. There are too many students who refuse to attend school or are only there physically.

2. The low level of cooperation between colleges of education and colleges of liberal arts.

3. Quick-fix approaches taken by state legislatures and local school districts to address teacher shortages. Emergency certification and alternative certification programs fail to recognize that the common characteristics of good teachers are knowledge of content, knowledge of students, and a variety of pedagogical skills.

4. A workplace that does not value teacher professionalism. An oppressive bureaucracy, large classes, insufficient curriculum materials, and top-down decisionmaking drive good teachers out of the profession.

5. A testing movement that places greater value on the memorization of facts and information and less on conceptual learning.

I would now like to turn my attention to papers by David Saxe, Wilfred McClay, and Peter Gibbon on the role and history of social studies.

Professor Saxe conducted two studies, one in 1998 and one in 2000, to highlight the status of history content in the history and social studies standards. While his initial investigation suggested that little or no history could be found in the standards, his second study suggested that positive change is occurring.

Points from Professor McClay's book, A Student's Guide to U.S. History, struck me as essential for explaining why history remains one of the core subject areas in social studies. History reminds us that we can never entirely remove ourselves from the unique times and places from which we've come, because they are essential to our American story. Nor can we reduce Americanism to a set of propositions, because our qualities constantly multiply and change. In A Call to Heroism, Professor Gibbon addresses student engagement by examining heroes and heroines. I thought of expanding his ideas to include local heroes and heroines, such as the men and women from the New York Police and Fire Departments, and those little-known individuals who live in our neighborhoods, those men and women who work tirelessly to address challenges in our communities. Why not also broaden the pool to include recent immigrants, the very men and women who have traditionally been omitted in our textbooks?

The issue is not social studies versus history, but working together to help our students become informed and productive members of society.

Why is American history still a mystery to our students? Why are the test scores so low? There are a number of reasons:

The most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress history test is different from the test given fifteen years ago. It is more sophisticated and requires analytical skills and writing abilities, as well as the recall of facts. The test covers more ground than the conventional American history course covers. There is more to learn and more to test. The test is given to students who take electives in social studies courses and may not be exposed to a conventional American history course. The notion of precise, sophisticated standards linked to curriculum and high-stakes testing is still new to Americans, who are accustomed to vague goals and teacher independence. Some teachers still short-change basic chronology and facts, and instead stress concepts, current events, and inquiry-based discussion. Concentrating on critical inquiry and coverage may squeeze out biographies and memoirs, materials that add excitement and drama to the American story and increase student interest.

The education of American teachers is uneven. Nationwide, more than half of social studies teachers have not majored in history. Collaborative lesson planning and professional development are not routine, as they are, for example, in Japan. Total student loads are high, planning periods rare, mentoring haphazard, pay low, second jobs common. The most precise standards, the most sophisticated curriculum, the most rigorous test, cannot make up for poorly prepared, demoralized teachers. The test is given to students raised in a visual culture, students who have shrinking vocabularies, shorter attention spans, and less efficient reading skills. Students spend more time with media than with teachers. Students who are exposed to an entertainment-celebrity culture find history boring and suspect. Data indicates that contemporary students are more vocational-minded and less civic-minded, and therefore less interested in the liberal arts.

What are our children learning about America's past? I travel around the country talking to high school students about the great men and women who have shaped America. What I have found is that revisionist history permeates our schools and culture.This suspicious view of American history is damaging to young people because it makes them ashamed of their past and pessimistic about the future. It implies that we are superior to our ancestors and encourages attitudes of ingratitude and self-righteousness. It makes young people dismissive of greatness by repudiating the notion that one person can make a difference, and, finally, attributing all progress to social and economic forces, revisionist history fosters historic fatalism.

Our children should master chronology and basic facts about America's past. They should learn how to analyze evidence and develop the habits of critical inquiry. They should also learn about the accomplishments of America, its ingenuity, its incomparable abundance, its steady progress toward equality, its humanitarianism. We should encourage students to be grateful to our ancestors, respectful of our values and institutions, proud of our heroes and, if I dare use the word, a little patriotic.

In the presentation of American history, there has always been a duel between professional historians who want to present what they consider to be the truth about the American past and lay people who believe that history should promote civic virtue.Recently, the duel has become more intense because the presentation of American history has become darker. Defenders of this new realism say that it prevents children from being naive.The dark side presented to young people is the projection on the American past of a tabloid culture preoccupied with sex, comfortable with cynicism, hostile to greatness. This fixation on the dark side is also a by-product of the enterprise of history because primary sources that survive tend to concentrate on violence, conflict, and the sensational, rather than on the normal and the good.

To counteract radical revisionist history, a moderate triumphalism would admit the mistakes America has made, but insist that America learns from its mistakes. A moderate triumphalism would look into all corners of American history for heroes, but would not automatically denigrate heroes of the past because they were privileged or powerful, because they thought or explored, or because they did not surmount every prejudice of their time. The trick is to teach American history so that students become informed and optimistic, realistic and idealistic, analytical and patriotic.