American Historical Association Releases Preview of Report on the State of History Education Across the Country

(Source: National Park Service)

In 2022, Jim Grossman, who is the Executive Director of the American Historical Association, invited me to attend the first meeting of a working group that planned to investigate what actually goes on in history classrooms across the country.

It was the height of damaging rhetoric that cast history teachers as enemies of the country and unregulated ideologues committed to brainwashing their students. By that time, a number of states had passed or were in the process of debating legislation that would censor certain aspects of history teaching, most notably in the areas concerned with the history and legacy of race and slavery.

I was encouraged by what I heard and I am pleased to see that the AHA will release its report later this year. Yesterday I read a summary of the report. Nothing in this summary suprised me. Much of what I read reflected my own approach to history education and especially what I’ve heard from the hundreds of history teachers that I have helped train through various professional development workshops over the years.

Here is the report’s key finding: “The typical American history classroom is neither awash in white supremacy nor awoke with critical race theory.”

In other words, teachers are not ideologues.

The other key point that it essential to understand about how history is taught is that there is not strict top-down structure that determines content and pedagogy.

Social studies departments are rarely structures of command and control. Depending on the locale, an ambitious administrator might set expectations about pacing, assessment, and materials, but teachers retain substantial discretion over what they’ll use in their day-to-day lessons. Textbooks have moved to the margins of the history classroom, reflecting a relentless push for “one-to-one” ratios of computing devices to students. Over 30% of teachers surveyed said they never use a textbook, and those who do are far more likely to describe them as “a reference” than something that they expect students to read regularly in class or for homework.

In other words, teachers cobble together lessons and readings from multiple sources, these days mainly from the Internet. Good teachers spend time assessing the veracity of content. From what I’ve seen, this is one of the areas that teachers could use much more training an guidance in.

Teachers surveyed tend to view their role as encouraging their students to think critically about the past through the interpretation of primary sources. Again, they are not working from a narrow agenda of indoctrination.

Teachers we surveyed strongly agreed on the top goals of social studies education: critical thinking (97% of respondents) and informed citizenship (94% of respondents). History teachers instruct and inspire, but they do not indoctrinate.

Finally, this report will likely lead to charges of ‘both-sidesim;’ in fact, I am already seeing it on social media. The charge appears to stem from the summary’s first paragraph.

For the past half-decade, amid overheated rhetoric contesting the very essence of national identity, Americans have been subjected to competing caricatures of the country’s history classrooms. Progressives have voiced fears that the typical U.S. history curriculum is a whitewashed fable that suppresses uncomfortable truths about slavery and race. Conservatives have claimed the opposite—that educators, swept up in a hypercritical obsession with race, now teach children to hate their country. The good news is that neither of these panicked portrayals are accurate. Media accounts of a politically charged war for the soul of social studies are overblown. (my emphasis)

This is an unfortunate misreading of what the AHA has done, which is meet history teachers where they are in their classrooms across the country.

In all my work with teachers over the years, I rarely get into political discussions, but in my experience they fall on both sides of the political spectrum. We should keep in mind, and the report appears to allude to this, that legislation in conservative states, led by Republican legislators is hurting teachers regardless of their political affiliation. The legislation that has been passed has not protected students, it has stifled good teaching practices as well as passionate and committed teachers.

Let’s be clear, teachers are not neutral umpires, simply calling balls and strikes, but the best teachers out there are wary of steering their students toward either side of the ideological/political spectrum. Again, their overall goal is providing content that reflects the complexity of American history and which will help their students think more carefully about it.

It is unfortunate that a report like this is even necessary. Most teachers and schools are transparent with what takes place inside their walls. Parents have always had access to what their children are learning. That politicians and other have shrouded the process in clandestine and subversive language reflects just how political this issue has become over the past few years, but it has told us nothing about the reality of the classroom and, in the meantime, has done a great deal of damage.

I suspect that this is exactly what many of these bad faith actors have intended all along.

Thanks to the AHA for doing the hard work that went into this report. I don’t know whether it is going to have any impact. What I do know is that thousands of talented and passionate teachers are heading into their classrooms again today to do what they love. Thank you.