Many of you have reached out asking about the seemingly lack of history being taught in schools. “Why do our students seem so ill informed about history? And why does it seem especially bad at our most elite schools?”
Good (and fair) questions.
Here is my historical lens on changes and decisions regarding “social studies” / “ethics”/ “history” courses in K-12 made in the recent 3 decades. There have been less changes in higher education in regards to methods. History departments still exist, but their staffing wanes along with interest.
But K-12 where one is required to take “social studies” there have been massive changes to standard practice. Please keep in mind that all these decisions were data informed and chosen to enhance learning outcomes, not hurt them. And we have seen some evidence that this new method does increase retention and enhance critical thinking. However, as you all now know, there have been some unexpected consequences to these modern approaches.
Flash back 30+ years ago…
Do you remember the class in high school called “world civilizations” or if you were cool you called it “world civ?” There was a big textbook (usually with some Roman looking cover). The history class was a march through time. Documenting the rise and fall of civilizations around the world. You went from empires to kingdoms to governments, an entire tour of the world’s “civilizations” in just your Sophmore year. It was packing hundreds of years in 50 hours of instruction and just due to that reality, one cannot argue, it was a topical view of history.
Do you remember this class?
If you don’t…don’t feel bad. You are just one of the 99% of people who pushed it out of your memory as it did not have any relevance to you at the time. It felt far away (meaningless) and the only thing you recalled was for a quiz and those memorized factoids were forgot within days after.
If you do remember…you most likely don’t have anything positive to say about it. It was ranked the least liked class by the majority of students. Feedback from students was clear “BORING” and the data showed that their boredom concluded in zero mastery/learning. Graduates of these classes were no more informed on historical events (a year later) than those who didn’t take it at all! And if anything it turned people OFF from history. History continues to be a major in decline. You can see this by looking at the staffing models at universities where history departments are often multitudes smaller than even non degreed departments (for example DEI departments are often larger).
Therefore, history education in the US was deemed by this educator and others as a failure. We began to rethink how we could teach history in a way that was meaningful. We debated the goals of history and all agreed its ultimate goal was to learn from the past and to value multitude of perspectives. We sought to build curriculums that were:
Useful- students could see how history affects them today. We did this through bringing in their identities and current events happening around them so they would feel that these pasts events mattered.
Interesting- Teach in a way that captures students interests. Mastery can only happen if you have the attention of the student. This resulted in more hands on projects and less topical glances of dates and times, but in depth studies of fewer, but rich examples.
The result? Teaching in Themes / Lenses.
By focusing on major themes throughout history we can dive deeper into a few prime examples and have students reflect on how these examples are or are not present today. Not only was this thought to be a more interesting way to teach history, it was argued (and still is) that it would enhance critical thinking skills as students would be required to find similarities across history. Compare/ contrast, be critical thinkers! They could see how the Ottoman Empire’s fall was similar to another empire’s fall and through this analysis see the basics of how civilizations function (government, culture, religion, economy).
In addition, education was moving towards integration, which I would argue is a positive direction. We were fighting to end the silos of departments and creating an education experience where science, literature, etc were not isolated subjects, but rather, support one another. The first to be integrated was “social studies” as it was easiest. For example, this year my son had a unit in school called “tree huggers.” In science they learned about trees and in social studies they learned about indigenous tribes who worship nature. Social studies became the vehicle to create integrated learning experiences. Social studies became dictated by literature and science units which had learning outcomes that are often tested. Thus, they led. Social studies became a supporting player to the larger goals.
The result? We succeeded in having more immersive and hands on studies. Students went deep into topics and applied critical thinking skills across disciplines. However, we lost some of the fundamentals. No longer did we have any linear march of history through time. Instead we would jump to examples of themes across continents and centuries. This approach also didn’t leave space for those “boring” fundamentals like geography. The result is an entire generation who has no concept of time nor a map. Like zero concept. Don’t believe me? I beg you to do the following. Ask a 25 year old to put major historical events on a timeline and find Germany on a map. Trust me they will fail this exercise. Even the student with straight A’s who graduated Harvard will fail. Not because they are not capable, but because they never have been taught it.
And while the word “context” has forever been changed for me since the congressional hearings on campus anti-semetism, I do feel the need to use this word to explain the other result (apologies in advance). By grouping historical moments of humanity into themes, you lose the nuance and the context to each individual moment’s uniqueness. Sometimes in life you can’t compare. And often by comparing you are belittling or changing the context of one or the other’s events/peoples history.
Thus…a generation with no concept of before and after (no linear time fluency) coupled with an education that focuses students to analyze the world through themes and lens, which sadly became one narrative- oppressed vs. oppressor.
And here we are…
Hope this is helpful.
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