Pushing to Plug History’s Gaps for Pupils

The high school juniors in George Rion’s American history classes fared poorly last week on a 10-question test covering some basic facts about the nation’s 210-year existence.

The vast majority of Rion’s Point Loma High School students answered less than half the questions correctly, even though almost all were taking American history for the second time, having had a previous course as eighth-graders. They missed questions about the most common reason for colonial immigration, the reason for Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, the causes for U.S. entry into World War I, and the story behind Soviet occupation of Berlin at the end of World War II.

“Don’t worry too much about how you did now,” Rion, a veteran of almost a quarter-century at Point Loma, told his classes. “That’s why we are going to spend the next 10 months together--to correct the misinformation out and about concerning American history and to fill in the gaps.”

Gaps Will Prevail

But recent national educational studies strongly suggest that even by next June--after almost a year of instruction--more than half of the students taking history at Point Loma and at the tens of thousands of high schools across the country will still have unacceptable gaps in their knowledge.

History and literature tests given to a nationwide sample of high school juniors, in a study sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, found what the authors called “shameful” performances on tests measuring basic historical and literary facts.

The report, the latest in a series of critical studies on the state of the American classroom, said that teachers spend too much time teaching learning skills and too little time teaching content. It also castigated textbooks for dull prose and inadequate attention to the historical sweep of the humanities.

Neither Rion nor some other teachers in the San Diego area argue with conclusions that students could be better educated. In fact, these teachers have been strong supporters of the state’s school reform movement over the past several years to lobby for more teachers, more texts, more challenging curriculums and smaller classes.

But the teachers do not automatically accept the corollary that flows from the national study: that the test results mean students are more poorly educated today than a decade or two decades ago.

“I’m not sure that if I had given (the review) test to history classes 20 years ago that there would have been much difference,” Rion said. “For example, most kids, even in my advanced courses (in the late 1960s), did not have the foggiest notion of what was going on in Vietnam.”

Questions Report

Rion has used the same textbook--updated periodically--for more than two decades.

“It’s well-written, the author has a lot of style, so I don’t know how you say that things have deteriorated if it’s the same text that worked so well in the past,” he said.

“I have problems with the report. I just don’t think that things have gone downhill the way the report implies. In fact, I think if anything, that the general overall knowledge of kids today is better.”

Some criticism centers on the national report’s inability to compare the performance of today’s students to those a decade or two ago because no similar tests were given in the past. The report was authored by Diane Ravitch, of Columbia Teachers College in New York, and Chester Finn, an Assistant U.S. Secretary of Education.

“I think that George (Rion) has put his finger on part of this,” said Kermeen Fristrom, the basic education director for the San Diego Unified School District, and formerly an English literature instructor.

“We all remember golden days that never were, and we all long for a past that never existed, when all citizens knew all the facts of history, read all the great works of literature--compared to today when somehow the present younger generation is always inadequate.”

Lament Not New

Fristrom said that the lament about today’s school-age youth is not new, recalling an article from a professional journal for English teachers that quoted strong statements about the inadequacy of secondary education, beginning before the turn of the century.

“The quotes began with educators from the 1890s and continued on with a spread of about 10 years between them,” Fristrom said.

“It would be interesting to hear about the areas of knowledge--the computer, for example-- that kids today know about that youngsters 30 years ago had no idea existed. Youngsters today have enormous capabilities and skills that did not exist back then. And certainly in San Diego, and I think in other big cities, our children can live far more successfully in a multiethnic society than my generation can, and that incidences of prejudice and destruction, while they still exist, are nothing compared to those in the past.”

Further, Fristrom suggested that a strong interest in history and literature may develop later in life for many people, based on his own experiences.

“We are not all creatures with these same deep interests as students,” Fristrom said, noting that he never knew whether Italy supported the United States or supported Germany during World War I--a question asked in one of the tests--while he was in high school.

“It may well be that interest in history, and literature as well, may stem from adult experiences that youngsters have had superficially.”

All of this is not to suggest that Fristrom and other teachers believe they should not, or have not, been working toward improving the present academic trend, even if they see it as is less than the dire situation as portrayed in the national study.

Lack of Motivation?

“I think that there is some difference between now and 20 years ago, and much I think is due to the family influence,” Point Loma history and government teacher Jack Dray said. “Homework used to be first for many kids, but today a lot of kids do not read as much as they should and they are nowhere near as motivated.”

As a result, Dray said, students learn many facts throughout the school year but soon forget them.

Adelbert MacDonald, who retired in June after 31 years of teaching history and government at Point Loma, added that many students today do not have as strong a grasp of the nation’s general cultural background as those of prior generations.

“I think it has something to do with television, with a lack of motivation and curiosity and willingness to concentrate, and with the lack of reading,” MacDonald said. “And because students in general do not read as much as before, textbooks must be written at times to use almost childlike language so that students will understand what they are reading.

“Twenty years ago, I could talk with 10th graders about Marxism, and the kids had at least more than a cursory knowledge of the Cold War and understood the nuances of politics involved.

“That doesn’t happen anymore, unless you talk about AIDS or abortion, which they can relate to in personal terms and which have an immediacy they pick up on from television, given its coverage of events in short spans of attention.”

MacDonald agreed with statements by author David Halberstam last month during a symposium on U.S.-Japan differences in subjects such as education. Halberstam bemoaned the lack of attention paid to education by many American parents, saying that “there is still a sense in many ordinary American homes that a male child of 14 who gets good marks while he is in high school is some kind of unfortunate freak: I mean, if he were healthier, he would not do well in school.”

Child Must Try

MacDonald said: “I believe that it’s not so much what I do or what the textbook does, but what the kid does for himself or herself that really makes the difference. There are certain ways the schools may not have done their jobs but, by and large, the kids are responsible for what they learn, and a kid who is consciously trying to do what is laid out for him will have a measure of success.”

MacDonald called the skills-versus-content debate flawed in that the basic skill of reading--and the desire to read--is critical to any success in teaching content.

Rion pointed out to a class visitor the first week of school how many students were coming to class with no notebooks or paper. “I tell them to get some or else they aren’t going to be able to keep a daily journal, which is one of my requirements,” he said. “But how do they expect to get anywhere without having paper?”

But Fristrom and MacDonald see an improvement over the past several years as schools have begun to benefit from greater attention paid by society regarding shortcomings.

“I think with all these reports now you are seeing the manifestation of the conflict between the concrete--what I would call as a former English teacher the romantic--and the ideal--or the neoclassic value in society.

“So the neoclassic reformers are driving us now to go back and study the great philosophers, study history in depth, the great books in literature, all in a drive toward the ideal, of reaching toward perfection.

“I have no problem with that; I have believed in this for a long time, that we can help everybody, that we can teach our immigrants, our English-limited students, that we can have a strong core curriculum, for example.

“But I keep in mind the limitations of reality and am satisfied with smaller gains than I would want ideally, and I am satisfied to be humane as well, so that if we don’t get to the ideal, we don’t then revert to discouragement and cut off the heads.”