California Schools Gear Up to Fight Pervasive Public Ignorance of the Past

Study after study has shown that the American public is woefully ignorant about history, geography and politics. Last year, a national survey revealed that large numbers of high school juniors currently enrolled in American history classes know little of the significance of such key events as the Civil War, the Brown decision, the Scopes trial and Reconstruction.

When adults are tested, they do no better. In a recent international survey conducted by the Gallup Organization for the National Geographic Society, 45% of adult Americans could not find Central America on a world map and 75% could not locate the Persian Gulf. Compared with their counterparts in Sweden, West Germany, Japan, France and Canada, American adults fared poorly; they were on a par with the United Kingdom and bested only Italy and Mexico.

While there are no comparable statistics to reveal what Americans understand of politics, the candidates in the 1988 presidential campaign seemed to operate on the assumption that the electorate neither knew nor cared about the great issues of the day. The deficit and arms control were mentioned only in passing and virtually no attention was paid to American policy in Latin America, perestroika in the Soviet Union, political turmoil in Eastern Europe, economic uncertainty in China or famine in Africa.

Both children and adults learn about the way the world works from a wide variety of sources, including television, the newspapers, movies and their own experiences. But the only institution that is purposely designed to teach Americans about the connections between past and present and about their role as citizens is the public school system. And it is to the schools that we must look for improvement in public intelligence.

The inexorable link between the quality of civic life and the teaching of history, geography and civics in the schools has prompted a flurry of reform proposals. A few months ago, the Bradley Commission--a group of distinguished historians (including Kenneth Jackson, C. Vann Woodward, William H. McNeill, Leon F. Litwack and William E. Leuchtenberg) and social-studies teachers--issued a report lamenting the sorry state of history in the schools. The commission found that about half of our nation’s high school graduates never take a course in world history and nearly 15% study no U.S. history in high school. The commission called for a substantial increase in the time allotted to the study of history, beginning in the early elementary years.

But the Bradley Commission was not calling merely for more of the same. It rejected the hoary image of history as a study limited to the brain-numbing memorization of dates and battles. Today, good history instruction embraces geography, politics, economics, sociology and literature, and it introduces students to the experiences of minorities and women, of leaders and of common folk.

Even before the Bradley Commission was created, educational leaders in California recognized the importance of preparing youths for active, informed citizenship; this task becomes even more urgent in light of the large number of immigrants in California’s public schools.

California is the only state in the nation that actually has a history curriculum that meets the demanding specifications set by the Bradley Commission. Approved last year by the State Board of Education, the state’s new curriculum will require all youngsters to study American history for three years (in grades 5, 8 and 11) and world history for three years (in grades 6, 7 and 10). Children in the elementary grades will get an early start on history by learning about local, family and state history and by studying the achievements of great men and women of different cultures. In addition, all high school seniors will spend a full year studying economics and government.

The new curriculum emphasizes the rights and responsibilities of democratic citizenship and teaches youngsters the importance of participation in the political process. Throughout the grades, students will learn how different societies are governed, how human rights abuses occur when democratic institutions are absent or destroyed and how individuals have made a difference throughout history.

To implement the new curriculum, teachers will need vastly improved textbooks and classroom materials. School districts need funds to prepare teachers for new courses, especially in world history and the new social history. Resources are also needed to encourage non-traditional ways of teaching history--using first-rate video materials, computer programing, original source documents, literature, debates, mock trials and other alternatives to the lecture-textbook routine.

The traditional way to teach history is cheap, easy and familiar: Teachers talk and students listen. Unfortunately, many students forget what they have heard as soon as they have disgorged what they know for tests. History comes to life when students imagine what it was like to be alive then; when they realize that the outcome of events hung in the balance; when they see events from different perspectives, and when they learn to think about causes and consequences and reflect on sources of change and continuity, in the past and in their own lives.

The state board will have to demand a new generation of textbooks in place of the encyclopedic and dull reference works that have given history a bad name with students. The State Department of Education will have to supply teachers with the funds to buy biographies, videos, computer programs and vivid historical narratives, so that youngsters can discover that history has more real-life excitement than the soaps.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Bill Honig intends to launch a statewide “history initiative for the California public schools,” in order to raise public consciousness and support for the teaching of history. Honig wants the public to understand that history is not simply a school subject. It is the means by which we find out who we are as a people, how we have changed over the years and what we must know about the other peoples with whom we share the globe.