It’s graduation time for America’s high-school seniors, many of whom are now old enough to vote. But if the most recent evaluation of what they know about their country’s history and its government is accurate, very few of them are ready for that responsibility. According to the 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), just 12 percent of seniors are proficient in U.S. history while only 24 percent measure up in civics.
Such a dismal showing will come as no surprise to most Americans.
Last fall, we asked 1,000 Americans what they believe high schools should be teaching about citizenship and whether students actually learn those things. According to the results, Americans think most high-schoolers lack rudimentary knowledge about American history and government — a low opinion that certainly seems justified by the recent NAEP scores. When we asked respondents to rate their confidence levels about whether students have mastered important content and skills, the numbers never topped 50 percent for any item.
Worse, the more important the public considered a civics topic, the less confident they were that students were learning it. While almost 70 percent of respondents thought teaching students to identify the protections in the Bill of Rights was absolutely essential, barely one-third were at all confident that most high-school graduates can do so. Fewer still thought students had learned basic concepts about U.S. government, such as the separation of powers.
The NAEP results suggest they might be on to something. When asked about the topics they’d studied in civics, 72 percent of twelfth-graders cited the Constitution in 2006, but the rate dropped to 67 percent in 2010. Just 66 percent recalled covering Congress, compared with 69 percent in 2006.
Some would blame test-based accountability, with its emphasis on reading and math. It’s not surprising that principals and teachers would focus their efforts on those subjects where they’re held publicly accountable. Nonetheless, the vast majority of high-schoolers still take at least one course in civics or government before they graduate, and U.S. history remains a staple of the high-school curriculum. The trouble isn’t simply that students aren’t receiving civics instruction, it’s also that the time allotted to the subject isn’t being well spent.
While the public would prefer schools to devote their time to enhancing pupils’ concrete civics knowledge, teachers favor the more social lessons of community service and tolerance — no matter that the public ranks these among schools’ least important goals.
For example, in a national survey of high-school teachers we conducted last year, over 75 percent of teachers deemed teaching tolerance to be absolutely essential; in our survey of the general public, only half of the public felt it merited that degree of attention. Likewise, a meager 18 percent of the public wanted schools to promote civic behaviors — e.g., raising money for causes — compared with almost half of all teachers. Nearly twice as many Americans as teachers considered teaching key facts and dates — such as the location of the 50 states — essential.
With American students less proficient in their nation’s history than any other subject, it’s hard to argue against the public’s emphasis on old-fashioned content. If creating good citizens who understand the workings of their government is a national goal, schools need to do better. And there seems to be no better place to start than by listening to what American citizens as a whole think is important to learn.
— Gary J. Schmitt is resident scholar and director of the Program on American Citizenship at the American Enterprise Institute. Cheryl Miller is program manager of the Program on American Citizenship. The Program’s report, “Contested Curriculum: How Teachers and Citizens View Civic Education,” can be found at citizenship-aei.org.
Ann Althouse had a great suggestion on this issue - why not teach reading via texts in history in civics??
Why not reduce reading literature in favor of non-fiction in our nation's history?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBecause most literature teachers want nothing to do with non-fiction. As a science teacher, I fight this fight constantly. There is so much good non-fiction in science (and history as well) that is being ignored. I am convinced it's not done because "We've never done it that way before." Glaciers move faster than change in public education.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseExcellent suggestion! When I taught middle school social studies and language arts, that is exactly what I did. The students loved it, as novels give life to the period they are studying. I've seen this in some public middle schools that use block periods where the teachers coordinate their lessons. Thus the language arts teacher will grade papers for grammar, while the history teacher grades for content.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'm an old guy now, but I recall that in high school, American history was three things: slavery, world war II and Vietnam. Slavery because to the left that is a way to brow-beat America. World War II because kids were interested in it, came into it thinking America was triumphant (and there were lots of neat pictures) but the kids could be re-educated about the war by talking about Japanese internment and the A-Bomb. Vietnam for obvious reasons -- America lost, communists won, draft was evil, hippies wonderful, Nixon resigned.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMaybe they'd throw in the Cold War but only so they can talk about McCarthyism.
You must be about my age - 37. That pretty much sums up the extent of the history taught in my high school (which was arguably the top public school - that wasn't a magnet school of some kind - in my state).
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJust another example of the liberal __________ (insert profession there) being out of touch with the main stream public.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThese results re not surprising, not because all teachers are leftists hacks but because in any line of work folks like doing the broad thinking stuff (tolerance, civic virtues) and hate doing the grunt work (names, dates, places). Any deployment engineer wants to be a design engineer, any design engineer wants to be a solution engineer, etc.
If I am a teacher (or deployment engineer) and know that I am going to be doing grunt work for the rest of my career I am going to push the limits are far as I can to do more interesting things.
I am current reading Disrupting Class, by Clay Christensen, in the book he tries to address how to get more, and more effective computer based training. It seems to me that the use of computers to train on the grunt work makes a lot of sense.
Of course even if you had 30 kids learning via computer you would need to have an NEA tenured teacher in the class room, and thee Union would still complain about class size.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@SeanB,
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI think you hit the nail on the head. For me, US History was a waste of time. We learnt early to give the answers that would most impress the Teacher (ie, "In Your own Words, why was Nixon such a lousy President?" or "Write one paragraph about a former slave and how his life could be an inspiration to us all?") I don't think more than 3 or 4 of us could name the birth place of Nixon. And fewer still could name the President of the US during the Civil War let alone explain the Dread Scott case). We did memorize those paragrpahs in our text books that eludicated the Left's version of History.
Yes, we can blame the teachers again which conveniently ignores the larger problem. Our kids don't know enough civics because they think that it's boring compared to such exciting things as reality TV, posting on Facebook, and partying. And when they fail, we blame the teachers and the school system, thereby absolving students of responsibility. I remember my senior year government class. I read the assigned reading, paid attention in class, etc. and learned a lot. But most of my peers didn't and just tuned out as they wrote notes about gossip or parties. Things won't change in our educational fields until we start collectively shaming students for not being successful instead of just scapegoating teachers.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe NEA membership isn't entirely liberal, but its leadership certainly is. If the agenda is for big government, centralized control, and socialism-lite, it is imperative that the voting public know as little as possible about the constitution, civics, liberty, individualism, etc.
The dumbing down of American youth is a top-down effort and it is working marvelously. [Nat'l NEA working thru state NEA working thru regional school districts to create a population that won't even know it's getting scr*wed].
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI guess I'm an outlier having gone to Catholic schools for 12 years, but I recall having learned American history, including at least rudimentary civics, in grade school. I now live in North Carolina, and have looked at the official state curriculum for "social studies" for grade school. There's little to no American history there.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse30+ years of teaching 'Social Studies' rather than History, and we're wondering why Americans are ignorant of History?
Is it possible to be accredited as a teacher without undergoing Marxist Indoctrination for a few years as an education major? Nationwide, we are about 40% Conservative, 40% Independent, 20% Liberal. For teachers in Humanities departments the numbers are more like 85% Liberal, 1% Conservative (in universities, its even worse).
Maybe if we taught our children History instead of feeding them Socialist Propaganda, they would have a better understanding of the founding principals of this country.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI wonder how well the teachers themselves know the facts of history and civics well enought to teach these things (as opposed to tolerance and community service). Maybe with things like community service, there are no wrong answers, and therefore less of a grading challenge.
No wonder programs like "Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?" get so popular.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAfter two or three generations of leftist domination of America's schools, it should come as no surprise that the blind are leading the blind. In my school years, post-WWII, we were taught, nay inculcated with, the glories of being citizens of the United States of America. We learned patriotic songs in our music classes. We celebrated the productivity of our natural resources in geography class. And "Civics" was a year-long, entirely separate course in addition to American History I, II, and III. Above everything, we were taught to be grateful to be here. And I remain grateful.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe Constitution and "tolerance" are not fungible. The former is the juridical framework of the United States of America, while the latter is a personality trait favored by teachers; the former is factual, the latter political. When propaganda intrudes on classroom time, the acquisition of core knowledge flees through the window.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI do think that some of the problem may be related to teacher certification. In most states, the social studies certification is designed to allow you to teach history, political science, economics, sociology, anthropology, and psychology (if my memory serves me) - and so if you're going to get certified in that degree, you have to take the intro classes in all of those fields. You end up learning a little about everything, but not much in depth*. Despite this, most social studies certified teachers are going to end up teaching either history or civics...very few public schools are offering anything other than that. Ideally there would be separate certification paths for each of those fields, rather than lumping them all together.
*I entered college with the intention of becoming a teacher, but switched to a straight history degree for exactly that reason
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou're 100% correct. In my History Department, we have eight teachers. Four have BA or MA in History and four have it in some other "social study." The knowledge gulf is massive. I've sat in on a class taught by an antrho major and it's horrifying how little she knows about history.
Another problem is that elementary teachers give history the short shrift. They either teach "Washington cuts down the cherry tree" or they teach Kumbaya. We need to prioritize history over math and science as they are useless without a firm knowledge of history.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYet another benefit of having attended a parochial school - I learned all about separation of powers, checks and balances, the bill of rights, federalism, and, best of all, learned the Preamble to the Constitution via Schoolhouse Rock (I will never be able to get that song out of my head!)
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe prescription for destroying the Western democracies was and is in part to gain control of the schools. Once control is achieved, the curriculum is to be changed to create and reinforce divisions in society, diminish or destroy any and all accepted truth or wisdom, and to create in the youth a belief in the appropriateness and ability of collective action over individual freedom and capitalism.
For over twenty years I have watched as supposed conservatives and patriots held their head down in the sand denying that this was going on in their own communities and schools. Now we see the sand starting to be blown from around their heads.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt is not an accident that history has been hardest hit by the leftists. Remember the famous line from Orwell's 1984? "Whoever controls the past controls the future. Whoever controls the present controls the past."
This summer I enrolled in a graduate level education class (it is a requirement for my degree). The course is supposed to be about curriculum development, but the textbook is quite Stalinist in its viewpoint and the course is exclusively about turning teachers into left-wing political hacks.
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