I have struggled
with many of the same issues you raise in your post “No Common Core Social
Studies standards.” I am not well read
in any of the professional literature (though your references to Diane Ravitch
have not gone unnoticed) but I have participated for decades in discussions and
activities at the department and district levels in attempting to gain some
traction in establishing content standards for various courses in Social
Studies. As a former Department Chairman
I organized and facilitated groups whose sole focus was to develop content
standards and evaluative materials to assess progress. I have organized informal discussion groups
with department members in efforts to create common assessments based on common
content standards. Most of this activity did not lead to much success.
So why have content standards for the other three
disciplines been agreed upon and Social Studies not? My view is that agreement in our discipline
is more difficult – far more difficult. We can get there, but not without more
work. Our task is simply harder and
there are key factors that have combined to create this difficulty.
The following is a series of my own observations on the
content problem in high school Social Studies following 32 years in the
profession. I don’t consider these in
any priority order…rather, I think these factors feed one another, creating the
unique complexity in determining content standards for the Social Studies.
#1 Every problem
we have today was once a solution to a previous problem:
One important way that high school Social Studies has
radically changed over the last 50 years is that we now offer many more courses
than in the past. While on the one hand
we have immensely enriched the breadth and range of intriguing subjects that
cater to the individual interests of our students, on the other hand we have
watered down the identity of the discipline.
For example, in my high school back in the ‘60’s, we all took World
Geography in grade 9, World History grade 10, Regents U.S. History grade 11,
then one of two electives in grade 12.
We all took the same exams and presumably, our teachers all followed the
same curriculum.
The weaknesses of this simpler system are, I believe, more
obvious than the strengths. The
curriculum was way too vanilla to hold the interest of many students. The teaching methods (lecture, lecture &
more lecture) and materials (mimeographed “worksheets” requiring students to
copy phrases out of textbooks) were flat-out deadly. Much of the required content (the old “names
and dates”) began to lose relevance for students who were busier weighing out
their options for military service in the Vietnam era or others caught up in
the general anti-establishment mentality of the late 1960’s - early
1970’s. Social Studies was in trouble.
In order to maintain relevance (and jobs), high school
Social Studies departments all over the country began to diversify their
programs through elective courses that in many ways have fundamentally altered
the landscape and identity of the discipline.
Today, we still teach history, but our students perceive our departments
as more a smorgasbord of interesting possibilities. Many of our teachers are specialists in the
fields of their elective courses, but they’re still required to teach a couple
of US History sections to round out their required five classes. To stay with US History as our example, in
the last 50 years, the experience of the US History class for both students and
teachers has fallen from its arguable position as the central focus of the
Social Studies Department to (in many cases) a sluggish and dull requirement. Language Arts, Science and Math have experienced a similar
dynamic, but nowhere near to the same degree.
In the context of creating content standards, this
difference matters. In the Social
Studies, the question “what’s worth learning?” has become far more complex than
it once was. In the next century, will
it be more valuable for our students to understand the workings of markets and
money or the motives and decisions of past leaders? Family dynamics or party politics? An understanding of different ideologies and
world views or modern theories of personality development?
Our discipline has taken on all of this and much more. We offer courses in Economics, Psychology,
Area Studies, Sociology, Philosophy, African-American Studies, Film Studies,
multiple AP programs, etc., etc. We’ve
become something of a “catch-all” department – altering our offerings to
students based on our understanding of THEIR interests rather than dueling with
the more difficult question “WHAT’S WORTH LEARNING?” and developing standards from
the answers to this question.
But there IS content knowledge that IS more important. For example, I believe that it is very
important for students to understand how widespread overuse of credit leads to
economic downturn and depression. I also
think it valuable for students to understand Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Both important…but I would argue that the
understanding of credit is more important.
I don’t know for certain that I’m right, but I believe I could make a
pretty strong case for it and I’d probably win it. I could lose though, and if I lose I still
win because we’ve all now made a decision and we can move forward to the next
item.
Conceptually, this approach has already been successfully
implemented by the “Big 3.” Their
success in identifying and developing content standards (and our failure to
this point) is due in no small measure to the fact that we have to push the
boulder up a higher mountain. And hard
as it is to swallow, this is a mountain of our own making.
We need to narrow the focus in order to achieve the same
success. In my view, US History is the
best candidate. Some form of US History
is taught in virtually every American high school and even if teachers or
administrators or parents or other stakeholders have never taught US History,
they have all studied it at some point.
Everyone arrives at a discussion involving US History with some
experience and ideas.
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