History ... With No Facts

One in five American high school seniors thinks Germany was a U.S. ally during World War II, a nationally administered test found. Less than 15% of this nation’s schoolchildren are proficient in U.S. history.

The good news is that California’s students are doing better than their peers nationwide, in part because educators here have already corrected some of the sorrier trends undermining much history teaching.

In other states, too many social studies courses still center on fun themes, debates and art projects, creating a crop of opinionated but historically illiterate young citizens. They can argue passionately about impending war with Iraq, unencumbered by facts about Middle Eastern history or the U.S. system of checks and balances.

Now the threat of war has focused attention on what America doesn’t know about itself and its history -- and what it should. The answer is simple. Children need a fact-based foundation in the chronology of their nation and the world. They should learn how their nation came to be steeped in the highest ideals. They need rounded knowledge of political, economic and social events that shaped the world and of the people, grand and small, who shaped those events.

Instead, children in most of the nation sit through a muddled curriculum of everything from celebrities to psychology. The bible of this movement is a 178-page guide put out nine years ago by the National Council for the Social Studies, a teachers organization. It doesn’t require kids to learn ancient history or the founding of the United States. Instead, it offers such squishy classroom topics as “Individual Development and Identity.” In these classes, history is often reduced to such “student-relevant” subjects as “gender” or “environment and civilization.”

Traditionalists make a sensible call for more rigorous coursework. But the most vocal reformists have historical blind spots of their own. They push for a patriot’s curriculum that focuses on the heroism of the founding fathers and minimizes world history -- especially non-Western history -- along with the contributions of minority groups. The history of common people? Global issues? Low interest.

And their agenda has gained support in Washington, where Congress for the last two years has set aside $100 million for grants to teachers of traditional American history. Excluded are world history, geography and other important topics.

A top-level curriculum would make room for a classical foundation and creative, topical classwork. California, so often in the basement educationally, has laid out a smart academic course that could help lead the nation toward better history lessons.

The state’s history instruction starts in fourth grade and works its way through U.S. and world history to current events. A flexible year in ninth grade can be used to teach world culture or mini-courses in social issues that encourage research and critical thinking. Is anyone surprised that history is the one subject in which California’s students score above the national average?