Earlier this week The National Assessment of Educational Progress reported that 8th graders in the United States scored lower on their History and Civics assessment than they have since the Department of Education started testing for this in 1994.
I seem to recall taking a course called World History in 7th grade, a course called Washington State history in 9th grade and a course called U.S. History in 11th grade. My World History teacher was a fellow named Lynn Gurley whose chief claim to fame was having attended Washington State University to become a teacher where his college roommate had been a fellow named Adam West, aka, Batman, which first aired in January 1966, coinciding with my second semester of World History. Because I didn't sing and couldn't play an instrument I had the option of taking a course called General Music, which I did, and it was also taught by Lynn Gurley. The course had a strong emphasis on opera which meant listening to records and then learning the names and personal histories of the composers of the different pieces of music we had heard and gaining an appreciation of the fact that there had been famous operas composed in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, mostly in Europe and often telling stories far more remotely anchored in history. The World History course simply followed the text book. Read the chapter, answer the study questions at the end of the chapter and turn them in as homework, memorize as many names, dates, places and historical events as you could in preparation for a quiz, use the corrected quizzes to prepare for periodic tests and, between episodes of Batman, Get Smart and The Man From Uncle, select a topic and write a five page research paper about that topic using sources from the school library and from a field trip to the Seattle Public Library. Nearly all of the quizzes and tests were multiple choice or fill in the blank format. I wrote my research paper about the Crimean War. My U S History course in 11th grade was taught by my Debate coach so I was in that classroom two hours a day. Our teacher, Ron Gillespie, was a guy whose father was superintendent of the only school district in the county larger than the school district where I lived. The entire county was essentially one large naval installation, on land leased by the federal government from local Native American tribes, and comprised mostly of nuclear powered aircraft carriers and nuclear powered submarines that were too top secret to discuss aloud. We lived with a sense of assurance that in the event of a nuclear war we would be among the first vaporized. Our textbook that year, 1969-70, was new and it featured primary documents from the history of the country that the text was an attempt to contextualize. For instance, a chapter might be built around several excerpts from Alexis de Tocqueville's 'Democracy In America' and serve as a basis for discussions of French attitudes about democracy from the perspective of an aristocrat concerned about things like frontier justice and penology. Enough debaters, myself included, were in the history class with the added burden of helping to facilitate class discussion. My debate partner and I, our school's #1 team, had the honor of staging a debate in class with our school's #4 team on the topic of whether the United States should declare independence from Great Britain. The #4 team was given the advantage of choosing which side of the issue to debate and erroneously assumed that history was on their side. The class as a whole got to vote on which side had prevailed and it was determined that declaring independence was still a half baked idea that was not quite ready for prime time. Our debate topic that year for interscholastic competition was Resolved: that Congress should prohibit United States unilateral military intervention in foreign countries. My debate partner and I had a winning percentage of slightly over seventy percent that year. As juniors and first year debaters we competed in tournaments at five different college campuses where we could have competed as novices, but didn't, so we often faced opponents who were 2nd, 3rd or even 4th year debaters. I was really looking forward to my senior year in debate when I got the news that my dad had been offered and accepted a full professorship at the University of Houston in Texas where he was hired to direct a Graduate Training Program in Clinical Psychology. My senior year in high school would be in a district adjacent to NASA's Mission Control. That was also the year I was required to register with my local draft board in Galveston, using the lucky number, 29, I had drawn in the draft lottery on the basis of my birthday.
Fascinating to know that an overall lack of historical knowledge is not a new trend. My interest in history, specifically the Civil War began with the centennial celebration of that war when I was in elementary school. I had a 5th grade teacher that made history fun. But my secondary education made history boring, especially my US history teacher in my senior year. He was just phoning it in as his retirement was approaching. It was college and post graduate classes that revived that love of history that remains today.
In my capacity as a public librarian, I help parents find books and resources for their kids, and I remember a specific instance a number of years ago helping a mom find historical fiction for her 3rd grader. This mom seemed irrationally upset about the fact that her kid had to read *air quotes* historical fiction, and struggled a little bit with how historical fiction was defined. The impression I was left with was that this mom was starting to recognize her 3rd grader was learning things she wasn't familiar with and it scared her.
Thanks for sharing. It would be interesting to know more about what was going through this parent's head at that moment. At the same time I suspect that a good many people would be confused by the distinction between history and historical fiction.
I am with you on raising issues about the standardized test scores. I am not sure how much they actually mean (pun intended) other than many people are not good test takers. I also think the same can be said for more general assessments of American education but that is a debate for another day.
But I also think, as I suspect you do, that test scores aside there are issues with the degree to which Americans, on both side of the political divide, understand and appreciate our history. Some of the problem is that in my state at least one can teach secondary level history (middle school, high school) only having taken what we used to call Western Civ I and II and US to and Since. All general education survey courses. This means often, I realize this is not always true, the people teaching history at the middle school/high school level have no more than a cursory knowledge of the subject. That is why things like the professional development projects you do are so important.
I have said this before, I think part of the task of the history teacher (especially in secondary school and at the general ed level in college) is to be a story teller. To tell her/his students stories that convey some sense of the soul of the nation. But in doing so you have to insure that those stories account for all the currents that come together at any point in time to create the contemporary culture, and that is of course the problem. It is almost impossible to do that. I am not advocating we throw up out hands and go have a bud Light. We have to keep trying.
I know I did not often get it right. As a military historian I told stories about the arrival of the Iron Brigade at Gettysburg or the ethnic make of up of Unitied States forces at the Battle of the Little High Horn, or the USS Nevada's run for the open sea at Pearl Harbor, or the role of the code talkers or the 442 Infantry. But there are lots of other stories, all worthy of being told, that I missed in making my decisions about what to focus on. Everyone does this, there is no way you can't and to some degree it short changes the students.
I struggle with the balance between storytelling and critical thinking/writing skills. The former almost always gets couched in politics, which seems to get us nowhere. Unfortunately, in this current environment we've overlooked the fact that Americans from different backgrounds agree on a great deal about the content that should be taught.
Unfortunately, the public discussion/debate tends to get reduced to the question of whether you identify more with 1619 v. 1776.
I suppose I was thinking more of the 1619 v. 1776 aspect of the question when I talk about conveying an appreciation for the soul of the country and I agree the public debate often gets reduced to that level. I think this is what makes public history so hard. I am looking forward to your interview with your friend from the Petersburg National Military park. His take on being a frontline interpreter of American history to public will be enlightening.
I am looking forward to the interview as well. I haven't talked with Emmanuel in quite some time. It will be interesting to see how deeply he is willing to engage in some of these issues given that he is an employee of the federal government.
I’m with you on having been an indifferent or apathetic history student, academically speaking. And I know many smart, well-educated people who would probably struggle to pass a citizenship test.
It seems to me due to the fact that it’s taught in an emotional vacuum, with utter indifference to the fact that history is a living thing. In grade school, we learned history and current events. But if there was a connection, it was up to us, at 12 or 17 or 21, to find it ourselves.
The seeds for change are there. Your Substack shows links on a focused but important set of issues. Joanne Freeman and Heather Cox Richardson’s “Now and Then” podcast casts a wider net. These are model approaches the profession should build on.
It's certainly important for teachers to help students think carefully about the relevance of the past to the present. Unfortunately, that relevancy is all too often couched in political language or who has political control of state government and leverage over subject curricula. There are plenty of really passionate and talented teachers out there who are doing great work. It would be nice if they were left to do it without having to constantly look over their shoulders.
My college made students take the citizenship test during freshman year. I was one of the few to pass, but I still messed up the 13 colonies because it's easy to forget Maine wasn't one of them, and once you do that, you won't notice if you leave out Connecticut or Rhode Island.
I seem to recall taking a course called World History in 7th grade, a course called Washington State history in 9th grade and a course called U.S. History in 11th grade. My World History teacher was a fellow named Lynn Gurley whose chief claim to fame was having attended Washington State University to become a teacher where his college roommate had been a fellow named Adam West, aka, Batman, which first aired in January 1966, coinciding with my second semester of World History. Because I didn't sing and couldn't play an instrument I had the option of taking a course called General Music, which I did, and it was also taught by Lynn Gurley. The course had a strong emphasis on opera which meant listening to records and then learning the names and personal histories of the composers of the different pieces of music we had heard and gaining an appreciation of the fact that there had been famous operas composed in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, mostly in Europe and often telling stories far more remotely anchored in history. The World History course simply followed the text book. Read the chapter, answer the study questions at the end of the chapter and turn them in as homework, memorize as many names, dates, places and historical events as you could in preparation for a quiz, use the corrected quizzes to prepare for periodic tests and, between episodes of Batman, Get Smart and The Man From Uncle, select a topic and write a five page research paper about that topic using sources from the school library and from a field trip to the Seattle Public Library. Nearly all of the quizzes and tests were multiple choice or fill in the blank format. I wrote my research paper about the Crimean War. My U S History course in 11th grade was taught by my Debate coach so I was in that classroom two hours a day. Our teacher, Ron Gillespie, was a guy whose father was superintendent of the only school district in the county larger than the school district where I lived. The entire county was essentially one large naval installation, on land leased by the federal government from local Native American tribes, and comprised mostly of nuclear powered aircraft carriers and nuclear powered submarines that were too top secret to discuss aloud. We lived with a sense of assurance that in the event of a nuclear war we would be among the first vaporized. Our textbook that year, 1969-70, was new and it featured primary documents from the history of the country that the text was an attempt to contextualize. For instance, a chapter might be built around several excerpts from Alexis de Tocqueville's 'Democracy In America' and serve as a basis for discussions of French attitudes about democracy from the perspective of an aristocrat concerned about things like frontier justice and penology. Enough debaters, myself included, were in the history class with the added burden of helping to facilitate class discussion. My debate partner and I, our school's #1 team, had the honor of staging a debate in class with our school's #4 team on the topic of whether the United States should declare independence from Great Britain. The #4 team was given the advantage of choosing which side of the issue to debate and erroneously assumed that history was on their side. The class as a whole got to vote on which side had prevailed and it was determined that declaring independence was still a half baked idea that was not quite ready for prime time. Our debate topic that year for interscholastic competition was Resolved: that Congress should prohibit United States unilateral military intervention in foreign countries. My debate partner and I had a winning percentage of slightly over seventy percent that year. As juniors and first year debaters we competed in tournaments at five different college campuses where we could have competed as novices, but didn't, so we often faced opponents who were 2nd, 3rd or even 4th year debaters. I was really looking forward to my senior year in debate when I got the news that my dad had been offered and accepted a full professorship at the University of Houston in Texas where he was hired to direct a Graduate Training Program in Clinical Psychology. My senior year in high school would be in a district adjacent to NASA's Mission Control. That was also the year I was required to register with my local draft board in Galveston, using the lucky number, 29, I had drawn in the draft lottery on the basis of my birthday.
Fascinating to know that an overall lack of historical knowledge is not a new trend. My interest in history, specifically the Civil War began with the centennial celebration of that war when I was in elementary school. I had a 5th grade teacher that made history fun. But my secondary education made history boring, especially my US history teacher in my senior year. He was just phoning it in as his retirement was approaching. It was college and post graduate classes that revived that love of history that remains today.
I think many people are surprised to learn that test scores have always suffered.
In my capacity as a public librarian, I help parents find books and resources for their kids, and I remember a specific instance a number of years ago helping a mom find historical fiction for her 3rd grader. This mom seemed irrationally upset about the fact that her kid had to read *air quotes* historical fiction, and struggled a little bit with how historical fiction was defined. The impression I was left with was that this mom was starting to recognize her 3rd grader was learning things she wasn't familiar with and it scared her.
Thanks for sharing. It would be interesting to know more about what was going through this parent's head at that moment. At the same time I suspect that a good many people would be confused by the distinction between history and historical fiction.
I agree. I think about that mom often
I am with you on raising issues about the standardized test scores. I am not sure how much they actually mean (pun intended) other than many people are not good test takers. I also think the same can be said for more general assessments of American education but that is a debate for another day.
But I also think, as I suspect you do, that test scores aside there are issues with the degree to which Americans, on both side of the political divide, understand and appreciate our history. Some of the problem is that in my state at least one can teach secondary level history (middle school, high school) only having taken what we used to call Western Civ I and II and US to and Since. All general education survey courses. This means often, I realize this is not always true, the people teaching history at the middle school/high school level have no more than a cursory knowledge of the subject. That is why things like the professional development projects you do are so important.
I have said this before, I think part of the task of the history teacher (especially in secondary school and at the general ed level in college) is to be a story teller. To tell her/his students stories that convey some sense of the soul of the nation. But in doing so you have to insure that those stories account for all the currents that come together at any point in time to create the contemporary culture, and that is of course the problem. It is almost impossible to do that. I am not advocating we throw up out hands and go have a bud Light. We have to keep trying.
I know I did not often get it right. As a military historian I told stories about the arrival of the Iron Brigade at Gettysburg or the ethnic make of up of Unitied States forces at the Battle of the Little High Horn, or the USS Nevada's run for the open sea at Pearl Harbor, or the role of the code talkers or the 442 Infantry. But there are lots of other stories, all worthy of being told, that I missed in making my decisions about what to focus on. Everyone does this, there is no way you can't and to some degree it short changes the students.
Hi Michael,
I struggle with the balance between storytelling and critical thinking/writing skills. The former almost always gets couched in politics, which seems to get us nowhere. Unfortunately, in this current environment we've overlooked the fact that Americans from different backgrounds agree on a great deal about the content that should be taught.
Unfortunately, the public discussion/debate tends to get reduced to the question of whether you identify more with 1619 v. 1776.
I suppose I was thinking more of the 1619 v. 1776 aspect of the question when I talk about conveying an appreciation for the soul of the country and I agree the public debate often gets reduced to that level. I think this is what makes public history so hard. I am looking forward to your interview with your friend from the Petersburg National Military park. His take on being a frontline interpreter of American history to public will be enlightening.
I am looking forward to the interview as well. I haven't talked with Emmanuel in quite some time. It will be interesting to see how deeply he is willing to engage in some of these issues given that he is an employee of the federal government.
I’m with you on having been an indifferent or apathetic history student, academically speaking. And I know many smart, well-educated people who would probably struggle to pass a citizenship test.
It seems to me due to the fact that it’s taught in an emotional vacuum, with utter indifference to the fact that history is a living thing. In grade school, we learned history and current events. But if there was a connection, it was up to us, at 12 or 17 or 21, to find it ourselves.
The seeds for change are there. Your Substack shows links on a focused but important set of issues. Joanne Freeman and Heather Cox Richardson’s “Now and Then” podcast casts a wider net. These are model approaches the profession should build on.
It's certainly important for teachers to help students think carefully about the relevance of the past to the present. Unfortunately, that relevancy is all too often couched in political language or who has political control of state government and leverage over subject curricula. There are plenty of really passionate and talented teachers out there who are doing great work. It would be nice if they were left to do it without having to constantly look over their shoulders.
My college made students take the citizenship test during freshman year. I was one of the few to pass, but I still messed up the 13 colonies because it's easy to forget Maine wasn't one of them, and once you do that, you won't notice if you leave out Connecticut or Rhode Island.
A wonderful example of factual irrelevancy.