Elementary Schools Fail in Basic Way

Two-thirds of American high-school juniors surveyed recently did not know that the Civil War was fought sometime between 1850 and 1900. One-third could not point to Great Britain, West Germany or France on a map. And half had never heard the names Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin. Presumably, then, half of our high-school juniors could hear Stalin’s acts attributed to Churchill, or Churchill’s to Stalin, without recognizing the error.

Remember, these are 17-year-olds--one year short of voting age. But to blame our high schools alone for cheating our children of historical literacy is to miss the mark. Before the end of junior high school we should expect our children to understand the basic landmarks in American history and world history, the basic rights and duties of American citizens and the basic contours of world geography. Elementary schools, from kindergarten through eighth grade, are responsible for these first lessons. And some of our elementary schools are failing to deliver.

This was one of the conclusions of First Lessons, a report that I am releasing today on elementary education in America. By and large I found that elementary schools are in pretty good shape. They are not menaced by a “rising tide of mediocrity.” But the teaching of social studies is a glaring exception.

In the early years social studies typically begin with a sequence called “expanding environments.” The study of the world starts in kindergarten with “me.” In the first grade it expands to the family, in the second grade to the neighborhood and in the third grade to the community.

Education historian Diane Ravitch explains that this sequence was originally introduced during the Great Depression to make children more aware of the social and economic realities around them. But over the years social science has edged out historical studies almost entirely. Young children have little or no time for learning abut their history, about their traditions or about the world beyond their noses.

In the fourth through the eighth grades, social studies do expand to include random pieces of historical sequences. However, the pieces are thrown into an amorphous grab bag of social sciences, along with bits of anthropology, sociology, law, psychology, science, economics and geography. For many students, the learning of real history is chancier than playing “Go Fish.”

Furthermore, students seem bored with social studies as now taught. Only 3% of 9-year-olds surveyed recently named social studies as their favorite subject, compared to 48% who selected mathematics and 24% the language arts.

I propose that social studies, as now constituted, be transformed. In the elementary years social studies should teach the knowledge and the skills needed for life in a democratic society through the interrelated disciplines of history, geography and civics.

Very young children don’t readily grasp abstractions like “the past.” But kindergarten through third grade spans some of the most imaginative and impressionable years in a child’s education. Instead of mundane stories about “neighborhood helpers,” students should be inspired by myths and legends, by fairy tales and biographies. Most have already transcended the barriers of their neighborhoods through television and travel. The curriculum should stretch their sense of wonder while teaching core democratic values such as respect for persons, property and truth.

Even in the early grades a reorganized social-studies curriculum could build historical literacy (through the dramatization of the past), civic literacy (by seeing the school as a community with rules and responsibilities) and geographic literacy (by developing understandings of place, location and distance).

By the time students reach fourth grade, around the age of 9 or 10, they are ready for more rigorous studies. By the end of eighth grade they should know the basic chronology and the most important events in U.S. history and world history. They should be able to point to the states of America and the nations of the world on a map. And they should begin to grasp some of the ideas that animate different nations and that link different eras.

To stress American civics and American history is not chauvinism. It is merely common sense. The proper first focus of American boys and girls, regardless of their ethnicity, is on the essential facts, the central institutions and the democratic principles of both the United States and the Western civilization from which we evolved.

When elementary schools turn out students who are historically and geographically illiterate, it is unlikely that high schools or colleges can step into the breach. The result is the high-school graduate who cannot tell Churchill from Stalin or Asia from Europe. We should plant the seeds of self-government in elementary school. And we should remember the words of Jefferson: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”