UCLA Picked to Design History Teaching Standard : Education: Results of the two-year project will be used as an instruction framework for the subject in public schools throughout the U.S.

Concerned that the nation’s school children are falling behind in their knowledge of history, the U.S. Department of Education has awarded a $1.6-million grant to a UCLA program to help establish national standards for teaching the subject in public schools.

The two-year project, funded by the department and the National Endowment for the Humanities, has been given to UCLA’s National Center for History in the Schools, a cooperative program with the endowment established in 1988.

In announcing the grant Monday, Education Secretary Lamar Alexander said: “Americans need to know their own history and the history of the major civilizations of the world. This . . . undertaking . . . will help move the nation to world-class standards and a greater understanding of the connections between the past, present and future.”

The UCLA center will develop a broad outline of the knowledge and concepts of history that students need to learn in elementary and secondary schools. Those standards, which are expected to be completed by 1994, will then be recommended to public school systems, but will not be compulsory.

History is one of five core subjects along with math, science, geography and English emphasized in an education strategy set forth by the nation’s governors and President Bush during the past two years. Efforts have begun to improve educational standards in math and science.

Lynne V. Cheney, NEH chairman, said history scholars and teachers are concerned that the humanities will be left behind if they do not follow the lead of mathematicians and scientists in improving standards.

Other nations set very high standards of education in the humanities for their students, and “there is growing agreement that our own deserve no less,” she said.

Charlotte Crabtree, director of the UCLA center and a professor in the Graduate School of Education, said the center was selected to head the project because of California’s recent efforts to upgrade public school curricula.

The state has won national attention for its new social studies “framework,” a blueprint for history teaching that seeks to avoid the constant repetition of American history by mandating that classes also study ancient civilizations, non-Western cultures and world history. The latest state-approved history textbooks have a multicultural emphasis and attempt to look at history’s effect on everyday life, instead of presenting the subject as a parade of dates and famous names.

California also requires high school students to take three full years of courses in social studies, including history, economics and geography.

Nationally, 90% of public schools teach a course in American history, although not necessarily for a full year, according to Crabtree. Another 5% offer it only to select groups, such as honor students.

The remaining 5% offer no courses in American history at all, Crabtree said, and fewer than 50% of the nation’s public schools require courses in world history as a condition for graduation.

Crabtree, who helped develop California’s history teaching standards, also noted that the time devoted to history lessons has slipped significantly in the last 50 years, especially at the seventh- and eighth-grade levels.

Moreover, teachers too often rush through the centuries with only superficial lessons, running out of time before they get to World War II, she said. As a result, she said, students may be graduating from some high schools without ever having studied the civil rights movement, the women’s rights movement or other major economic and political changes of recent years.

In establishing the new history standards, the UCLA center will set up a National Coordinating Council of members from various history organizations as a policy-making board. The center also will establish the National Committee of History Standards to represent and act as a forum for teachers, administrators, scholars, state legislators, business leaders, state school officials, the Parent-Teacher Assn. and other organizations.