Tuesday, December 27th, 2011
Where Are We Headed? The Future of Civics and History Education
Today’s Los Angeles Times featured an article dedicated to retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’ Connor push to revive civic education in our nation. Her rationale was based on the fact that many students and also adults are more familiar with TV show hosts than who currently is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. “Disturbing” is the word she used to describe the lack of knowledge that permeates our citizenry. What struck me the most came from this statement “One problem may be a consequence of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which emphasized reading and math instruction with required testing.”
For those of us involved with teaching civics this has been the case since the implementation of the No Child Left Behind in 2001. We have seen schools eradicate this area of curriculum and in some schools in the state of California schools have reduced the social studies curriculum to a semester instead of a year. What is the message being sent students? We’ll let our voting citizens of the future answer that, but I think that Justice O’Connor sums it up fairly well when she stated that there is a lack of knowledge in our public about government and its function. One could easily see this with our current state of political affairs and the low voting turnout during election season. I applaud O’Connor for her effort with the iCivics curriculum that attempts to broaden the civic knowledge of students, specifically 8th graders, by using interactive games that allow students to learn about the three branches of government by taking part in the process of legislation.
This is one in many efforts to combat the denigration of history and civics throughout our schools curriculum. However, a larger concerted effort is needed to convince policymakers that history and civics as equally important as math and reading. Thomas Jefferson believed education was important to the extent that through its means a common person would be able to participate in a democracy. Part of this education included history. The recent eradication of the Teaching American History grants from the federal budget are another indicator that civics and history education is under attack. This highly successful program has been instrumental in shaping how history is being taught in classrooms throughout the nation, and I as a participant in a TAH grant six years ago went through a transformation process in my own teaching. However, with this now gone, there seems to be a vacuum in the history/civics programs at the federal level. As budgets are being formulated in these dire times, I believe that history/civics education must be put on a equal footing as any other curriculum. Cuts in these two subjects because of the the “almighty standardized test” and for the sake of test scores are not a valid excuse for denying students a well-rounded education.
For many of my generation history classes were a series of memorizing wars and dates, but I daresay that most history classes are no longer subject to such monotony. Quite a few of my history/civics colleagues nationwide utilize a variety of learning strategies to spur the interest of today’s students. Utilizing online interactive simulations such as those promoted by Justice O’Connor or primary source study which stimulates critical thinking skills are very much part of the 21st century student. Blogging, writing persuasive essays about the Occupy Movement, creating web pages about historical figures, evaluating historical sources, are a few more activities that engage our students. With continuing cuts on the horizon, it is imperative to maintain this quality teaching and the programs that have fostered this innovation. Our future depends on it.










