Our Stake in the History Standards

Arnita A. Jones

Reprinted from the OAH Magazine of History
9 (Spring 1995). ISSN 0882-228X
Copyright (c) 1995, Organization of American Historians

The standards were developed by the National Center for History in the Schools, at the University of California at Los Angeles, with advice from American historians as well as from classroom teachers, parents, and other citizens. Nonetheless, conservative critics have characterized the standards as "politically correct" and contemptuous of traditional history. They insist that the federal bureaucracy is about to impose a centralized national curriculum on American schools. Lynne V. Cheney, who signed one of the contracts that financed the effort when she was chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, now complains that the final product is a warped view of history, and not what she intended.

Fueled by the concern of many citizens whose knowledge of the standards themselves derives mainly from talk shows or politicized debate, the controversy threatens to create a serious misunderstanding, if not demonization, of several decades of scholarship in American history. Moreover, the acrimonious nature of the debate, if it continues to escalate, imperils programs at the endowment and at the U.S. Department of Education, both of which helped finance the project. It could especially endanger the Education Department's Goals 2000: Educate America Act, a heretofore genuinely bipartisan effort, begun more than five years ago by President Bush and the nation's governors, to stimulate badly needed improvement in teaching and learning in our schools.

The Heritage Foundation has reportedly prepared a briefing book for new members of the Republican-controlled Congress, calling for elimination of many of the act's provisions. The humanities endowment was singled out for substantial reductions in the Republicans' "Contract with America." Neither the endowment's nor the department's budget will benefit from accusations of having made grants for projects that, as one Washington Post columnist contended, "turn political correctness into a federal mandate."

Fears about a centrally imposed national curriculum are unfounded. When the Organization of American Historians "the largest and oldest organization concerned primarily with research and teaching in United States history" was asked to help develop the standards, some members of its executive board initially were concerned about the possibility that the projects would intrude on state and local responsibilities. However, we were repeatedly assured by the staff of the U.C.L.A. center, as well as by the N.E.H. and the Department of Education, that the standards would be voluntary and serve primarily as a model to inspire appropriate efforts at the state and school-district levels.

Furthermore, we knew that at their landmark conference in 1989, President Bush and the nation's governors had selected history as one of five subjects for which national voluntary standards were to be established. The time had clearly come for historians to respond--and many did.

The team of historians assembled by U.C.L.A. was impressive. Gary Nash, the project's co-director, was elected President of the O.A.H. during the course of the project, a tribute to his achievements as a scholar and teacher of colonial and African-American history. Other scholars of American history whose work has been influential joined him on the project. Akira Iriye of Harvard University, Kenneth Jackson of Columbia University, Morton Keller of Brandeis University, and Darlene Clark Hine of Michigan State University, to name just a few, inspired confidence that the eventual product would be based on sound, up-to-date scholarship. What finally emerged was the result of a truly unprecedented effort at consultation and consensus building among members of twenty-four parent and community groups and several dozen experienced classroom teachers, as well as representatives of historical organizations and school administrators.

Some historians who read early drafts of the standards continued to have misgivings about the project, for it became clear early on that the standards would be both academically rigorous and expensive. Even the best national standards would be meaningless if school districts and states were not willing to devote more money to training teachers and to purchasing new texts and teaching materials.

O.A.H. representatives were pleased to see that the final document contained a clear statement emphasizing that adequate resources must be provided to allow all students to achieve the ambitious goals set by the standards and recognizing the need for high-quality professional development for teachers. The document also acknowledged that the standards should be subject to review, so that they would take into account continuing developments in scholarship. We know that each generation of American historians will have its own questions to ask of the past.

The overall problem the standards seek to address is an old one. As early as 1892, when the American-history profession was young and still contained many amateurs, the National Education Association convened a committee of scholars to study history teaching. It concluded that too many schools used lectures and recitations from textbooks. Subsequent cycles of outrage at the dearth of historical learning have occurred since then. In 1943, for example, a survey of 7,000 college freshmen by The New York Times found "striking ignorance" of American history. Yet, until recently, there has been little meaningful change in the methods that teachers use in all but a few classrooms in elite schools.

Beginning with the Department of Education's publication in 1983 of A Nation at Risk, Americans and their leaders have become increasingly vocal about the need to revitalize the curriculum and improve learning in the nation's schools. While reformers' efforts to correct perceived deficiencies cut across virtually all aspects of the educational system, perhaps no subject has come in for closer scrutiny than American history. And in no other field have reform efforts provoked a more impassioned response on the part of both citizens and educators. Both agree that a knowledge of American history is necessary for exercising the rights and obligations of citizenship at a time when many Americans--individuals and groups--have come to see history as a means of establishing and understanding their own identities.

Unfortunately, the swirl of negative publicity about the history standards means that many parents, teachers, and students may never read them. This would be a pity, for the standards represent an impressive breakthrough in linking the subject matter of history with new understanding of how children can and do learn at different stages of their development. The standards acknowledge, for example, that while young children may not fully understand the concepts of time and chronology, they can make basic distinctions between the present, the immediate past, and time long past. Hence the standards suggest, for example, that third- or fourth-grade students could be asked to develop a time line of what happened in their state or region, identifying early inhabitants and successive groups of immigrants.

At no time in our nation's past has it been more important to give students the means to understand our history. The standards developed at U.C.L.A. foster learning based not on what facts are covered or which great leaders are profiled. Instead they nurture the student's ability to engage in historical thinking and to formulate historical questions. For example, they suggest asking students to analyze the impact of the First World War on American troops by looking at such primary documents as photographs, poetry, literature, art, and music. They demand that students scrutinize historical evidence and critically examine existing histories, looking for patterns and multiple causes of events. They require students to compare alternative accounts or differing interpretations of history.

Far from ignoring traditional history, the standards incorporate the fruits of a new generation of scholarship concerning familiar topics, providing a more sophisticated understanding of, for example, the significant role played by the federal government in the development of the American West in the late-nineteenth century or the strategies that succeeding waves of immigrant groups used over the last century to insure their economic and cultural survival.

Arguments over which fact is included or who is not mentioned are irrelevant, for these standards make available to elementary- and high-school students--our future citizens--the analytical tools and skills they need to come to their own understanding of history, skills that will enable them to differentiate between historical facts and historical interpretations and to consider historical events and characters from multiple perspectives. The standards offer nothing less than an escape from the rote learning of factual matter that has bedeviled the introductory study of history in this country for more than a century.

Consider the case of George Washington, greatly mourned by critics because he supposedly is absent from the material required by the standards. Do observers seriously believe he could be omitted, when one of the standards requires "analyzing the character and roles of the military, political, and diplomatic leaders who helped forge the American victory?" Does anyone really think Washington's significance is diminished by asking ninth graders to "draw upon diaries, letters, and historical stories to construct a narrative concerning how the daily lives of men, women, and children were affected by such wartime developments as. . . the economic hardship and privation caused by the war?"

Students are asked here to think hard about the roles of leaders and of ordinary citizens, about the significance of each in relation to the other. In so doing, they can draw on a wealth of recent scholarship on the part of documentary editors, social historians, and constitutional scholars. If guided through these standards by teachers who are themselves well versed in the subject matter and skills of historical research, students can achieve a comprehensive understanding of the American Revolution.

Or reflect on the criticisms of two segments of the standards concerning the cold war. Students are held responsible for explaining the rise of McCarthyism, evaluating its effects on civil liberties, and analyzing the reasons for its demise. In the accompanying illustrative examples of what achievement of this learning standard might include, students are asked to investigate the historical record--legislation, law cases, and Congressional hearings--to analyze why McCarthyism failed. Far from being required to focus on a dark and negative aspect of American history, they are guided into a deeper understanding of the resilience and ultimate triumph of our constitutional system.

In an increasingly complicated and dangerous world we must have citizens who can exercise their rights and responsibilities with a keen understanding of how others--individuals, groups, nations--are affected by their experiences over time. Historians now must explain to taxpayers and their representatives in Congress and in state legislatures how the historical scholarship embodied in the standards can help achieve that goal. They can speak out in newspapers and other public forums and participate in efforts now going on in many states to develop new history curricula. After all, American historians teaching at colleges and universities stand to gain enormously if the voluntary standards are implemented in the nation's elementary and secondary classrooms. They will then have students in their own classrooms ready to undertake serious study of the discipline.