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Brainstorm: Lives of the Mind Mark Bauerlein

Kids' Knowledge of History

When the NAEP History scores came out last month, and the rate of 12th-graders scoring “below basic” went from 57 percent in 1994 and 2001 to 53 percent in 2006, the rise gave optimists and pessimists grounds for judgment. “We got improvement,” some said, while others replied, “We’ve still got more than half of them with an ‘F.’”

Another survey of historical knowledge appeared several weeks back entitled Still at Risk: What Students Don’t Know, Even Now. The survey received vast coverage, and its findings were just as negative as the NAEP scores (example: only 43 percent placed the Civil War in the period 1850-1900). This week, the author of the report Rick Hess has a summary statement on the findings, concluding:

When it comes to familiarity with major historical events and significant literary accomplishments, America’s 17-year-olds fare rather poorly. When asked relatively simple multiple-choice questions and graded on a generous scale, teens on the cusp of adulthood earn a D overall. . . . When it comes to familiarity with the base of knowledge that enables us to engage in conversations about values and policy, our 17-year-olds are barely literate.

His statement contrasts with another survey that came out recently, this conducted by Sam Wineburg and Chauncey Monte-Sano. It was reported in advance here, and a post appeared here. Wineburg and Monte-Sano asked 11th- and 12th-graders to rank the ten “most famous Americans in history,” and the five most famous women, excluding presidents and presidents’ wives. They reported the findings in the latest issue of Journal of American History.

Here is the first list:

1. Martin Luther King, Jr.
2. Rosa Parks
3. Harriet Tubman
4. Susan B. Anthony
5. Benjamin Franklin
6. Amelia Earhart
7. Oprah Winfrey
8. Marilyn Monroe
9. Thomas Edison
10. Albert Einstein

Based on the USA Today story, I wrote that these “selections indicate just how far out of the way current social studies curricula go in emphasizing women and African-Americans.” I thought, though, that concessions should be made for the instrument asking for the “most famous,” not the most influential or important figures in American history. But in the Journal of American History article, we read that the researchers “experimented with different wording for the prompt, substituting the words ‘significant’ and ‘important’ for ‘famous.’ Those substitutions yielded little difference in students’ responses.”

This is a serious finding of the study, but Wineburg/Monte-Sano have no interest in pursuing it. That fame and historical importance/influence mean the same thing to respondents might lead to sober reflections on celebrity and memory, but not here. Wineburg/Monte-Sano take the rankings at face value and highlight how they demonstrate how far America has come in recognizing women and African-Americans as historical players. They marvel at the top three on the list being black, though they wonder, with smooth superiority, “whether these four thousand Americans [the respondents] truly embrace diversity in their hearts.”

Indeed, the diversity point is the only kind of judgment they wish to make of the kids. They regret that “other struggles get left behind” (women’s movement, Cesar Chavez, Native Americans, the labor movement), but overall the historical accuracy or propriety of the list they set aside.

They do, however, have another judgment in mind, revealing several times a snide disdain of commentators and historians who criticize the young.

They eschew the “worriers’ call” and “prediction of impending doom.”

“Rather than convening a group of experts to rehearse the hoary ritual of ‘do you know what we know,’” they proclaim, “we instead allowed students to nominate the figures.”

And: “It has become a national pastime to give kids a test and then wag our fingers at their ignorance.”

And: “Such a convenient oversight [of not testing adults, too] permits each generation to marinate in the self-satisfaction that, back in their day, they knew their Andrew Johnson from their Lyndon Johnson.”

When historians ranked John Marshall 3rd on a list of influential Americans and only two of Wineburg/Monte-Sano’s 4,000 respondents mentioned him, they only note the “gaping differences between academic historians and the ordinary Americans.”

For them, it’s all relative. Things change. Values come and go. “As one set of myths goes backstage others jostle in the wings, waiting for their moment,” they explain. So, apart from the multiculturalist adjustments, let’s relax. Don’t fret at Marilyn coming out way ahead of Marshall.

So much for historical method. So much for historical truth.

Posted at 05:12:30 AM on April 24, 2008 | All postings by Mark Bauerlein

Comments

  1. To paraphrase another Marshall (McLuhan), though not an American, of course — it would seem from evidence internal to the list (e.g. the appearance of Marilyn Monroe and Oprah Winfrey) that “the media” is the message.

    — Anti-hypocrisy advocate · Apr 24, 07:00 AM · #

  2. I wonder how different the results would have been if presidents had been included. Comparing my own education to that of my parents’ generation, I am struck by the celebration of the “founder fathers” (esp. George Washington) in their primary education, and the complete lack thereof in my own. To my parents’ and grandparents’ generation, Washington is an American hero; to mine, he’s just another “dead white male” and slave-owning hypocrite. Their education surely went too far in the uncritical lionization of Washington et al., but mine ignores the real and substantial – even heroic – contributions they made to our country.

    — mike · Apr 24, 07:55 AM · #

  3. As much as I admire what Harriet Tubman did, I cannot understand how George Washington and Abraham Lincoln can be so non-existent for these students. That is not right no matter how we try to twist around our cultural and historical relativism.

    — Ieva · Apr 24, 10:55 AM · #

  4. Thought you’d be interested in this…in case you haven’t see this yet…

    Deb

    — lindsayflan@gmail.com · Apr 24, 11:37 AM · #

  5. Perhaps a more interesting question would have been: “now tell us why these people are important and why other people that you’ve heard of are less important?” That’s where the rubber really meets the road.

    — Dan S. · Apr 24, 11:42 AM · #

  6. I went through grade school before the curricular emphases shifted, but I think Mark overestimates the depth or rigor of traditional education.

    I remember being taught such doosies as, “George Washington is the Father of Our Nation” and “Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves.”

    Of course, those cliches were passed as unthinkingly on to us as the present PC cliches are passed on to today’s students. George Washington’s role in the founding of the nation is rather limited, really. And Lincoln, of course, only freed the slaves in the states where he was no longer President.

    The problem is that so much of K-8 history education is about learning symbolic cultural values. The number of times I had to read about Washington and the cherry tree is sickening. If now it had been replaced by Tubman and the Underground Railroad, I’m not all that appalled.

    History as the memorization of hero worship sucks no matter who the heroes are.

    — Luther Blissett · Apr 24, 02:26 PM · #

  7. I can only repeat that the internal evidence of the list (Oprah Winfrey and Marilyn Monroe) tells us that these are not responses from educational inculcation but rather from media exposure.

    Fully half or more of that list could be “learned” on Oprah Winfrey’s program! I don’t think we have strong evidence that the schools are in any way as compelling an influence.

    Nielson reports that the average American home is tuned into television over 8 hours a day and television viewing is still increasing despite the competition from iPods, etc.

    So, when school gets out, the last activity is over, and the teen is homeward bound — the TV is likely already on and there’s “Oprah” before dinner….

    — Anti-hypocrisy advocate · Apr 24, 07:47 PM · #

  8. This is evidence of the education system’s lack of teaching the truth about the history of this country. Dare we mention what really happened to the Native American and the historical impact of
    Europeans stealing this land and their so-called privilege to keep what’s doesn’t belong to them. Native Americans are still here and we want our land back.

    — Verona Iriarte · Apr 25, 04:39 AM · #

  9. Oprah Winfrey IS history to my students—she dated George Washington and funded the war of 1812!

    — Richard Tabor Greene · Apr 25, 05:35 AM · #

  10. Wineburg and Monte-Sano are right that students should understand the many significant contributions of women and people of color to our nation’s history, and a top-ten list that consists only of white males has obvious problems. (Question for all of you: Which person of color served as Vice President of the U.S.? You didn’t know there was one? I won’t nominate Charles Curtis for any top ten lists, but he was indeed an enrolled member of both the Kansa and Kaw nations, and lived part of his early years on the Kaw reservation. His American Indian blood quantum was probably about 3/8, decently above the 1/4 minimum that many tribes now specify. Though now considered a minor figure in American history, his contributions did include co-authoring, with Daniel Anthony, the first version of the Equal Rights Amendment.)

    However, the authors of this study seem to be not just avoiding one possible concern that arises from their study and deserves further investigation, but actively conducting a pre-emptive strike against it: That the responses are based not on a genuine value judgment about the people selected as opposed to those not selected, but rather on ignorance of the people not selected. I’m an American Indian also, as one of the other posters, and I am dismayed that our own students might not know of the crucial role that John Marshall’s “domestic dependent nation” decision played in our own history. Without it, we wouldn’t have the reservations, which remain the heartbeats and centers of many of our nations.

    — Bob M. · Apr 25, 06:48 AM · #

  11. Where is the corresponding list that historians produced?
    I have 2 kids taking AP American (one this year, one next) any suggestions on a recent overview that would take both views into account?

    — historian mom · Apr 25, 07:39 AM · #

  12. All public (school) curriuculum is PC, isn’t it? What’s your point? That contempoary students are more ignorant, or just as ignorant as before? What’s your real concern?

    — Martin · Apr 25, 07:42 AM · #

  13. Always fascinating to me is the media obsession with “math and science” scores on SATs since perhaps the early 1970s. Those scores have constantly gone up until perhaps the last two or three years when they’ve flattened. Paid no attention have been verbal scores, which have constantly declined until the last two or three years when they have slightly improved. Similarly ignored were any performance measures of the social sciences. This is odd because reading is the bread-and-butter of the print media, and social scientific knowledge (including history) of the print and electronic media news. Now newspaper subscriptions are steeply declining, CBS network news is nearly moribund with Katie Couric and an agreement with CNN for news feed. ABC network news may have committed suicide with the brainless questions asked by Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous, and NBC network news often leads with “medical news.” Instead of the “cute” quibbling over “post modernism” and the propagandizing of public education, a serious assessment of the significance of the decline in public education in history, social science, and reading need take place on the pages of the Chronicle. Indeed, the Chronicle itself tilts much more toward the “math and science” obsession of popular society, perhaps because policy makers seem so little concerned with an informed public, there’s nothing to report in respect to the liberal and fine arts or social sciences. Indeed, I pose a challenge to any journalism researchers out there: my strong suspicion is if a word count in newspapers is conducted, it would be found the word “democracy” has steeply declined in usage, and the word “capitalism” has steeply inclined in usage beginning in the late 1970s. If true, it makes a mockery of invading countries in order to “bring them democracy.”

    — DVP · Apr 25, 09:14 AM · #

  14. Clearly, only a populace ignorant of its history and its Constitution would be so easily misled into thinking that surrendering habeas corpus, etc. is a form of “freedom” used to protect “democracy”.

    Is anyone really sure that it is in the perceived interest of those governing to have an educated — and voting — populace?

    — Anti-hypocrisy advocate · Apr 25, 09:54 AM · #

  15. When you ask who is the most famous don’t be surprised to see Marilyn Monroe show up instead of Samuel Gompers. Rule #1 in survey taking: Ask the correct question.

    — first marci · Apr 25, 11:24 AM · #

  16. Another really interesting test might have been (or be for another day): “Name the five most important (or memorable, or famous) people excluding U.S historical figures.” Last time I looked, history went beyond national boundaries? And intersected across national boundaries?

    — Don P · Apr 25, 11:28 AM · #

  17. Perhaps a larger issue is at stake here, namely, the form that historical knowledge should assume in order to be truly “assessed”. Knowing history is not merely having some acquaintance with “facts,” but being able to think historically. Do these sort of fact-check tests do that? I doubt it.

    That is why so many of our “leaders” escape criticism of their utterly fatuous historical analogies, like McCain saying, sure, we’ll be in Iraq for decades just like we’ve been in Japan, Germany, and S. Korea. And Sadaam was Hitler, even though, as I recall, his arms build-up was certainly not Hitlerian and, unlike Hitler, he was powerless to prevent routine bombing and surveillance of his country which occurred routinely even before the official war began.

    It’s this sort of historical nonsense that really disturbs me. I really care less whether kids can properly place the civil war and more about our leaders who crudely exploit the nation’s historical amnesia, as Susan Jacoby’s THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON argues quite well. And how many educators are familiar with the efforts of educators like George Counts and others in the last century to make history and social studies meaningful for the young?

    Thanks to # 14 and # 13 for touching on larger issues and thanks to Bill Moyers’ Journal and his eloquent speeches so often historically rich in their presentations. And can we please, please stop thinking that the study of history is mainly done in the service of taking stupid multiple choice tests or polls which are supposed to really assess such knowledge? How abut asking how often students are asked to create a relevant historical context for addressing a modern issue or question. Obama’s speech on race did that. When was the last time you heard Bush, who studied history at Yale (!) situate his answer to a question in a historical context? No way. As one of his advisors famously said “We make reality and you guys (the press, historians) write about it.”

    Yeah, and lots of people have died in that reality you’ve made. They’re history.

    — George K · Apr 25, 12:16 PM · #

  18. It’s easy and fashionable to blame the public schools for everything. I estimate that abbout 90 percent of what I have learned about history did not take place in school – perhaps in spite of school! This is also true about most other “school subjects” for me (except calculus and chemistry). I think we have become far too dependent on the schools for our learning. The best way to learn history, psychology, literature, philosophy and other “subjects” is to read and study regularly. Learning is primarily an individual responsibility, and while the schools certainly can do better, it ‘s cop out to blame them for our own ignorance.

    — Carl · Apr 25, 12:20 PM · #

  19. On Comment 18:

    Yes, which is why I have advocated for “brick and click” education for all levels — more easily and better paced for the individual learner, yet grants some face-to-face for the human interaction and educates for lifelong, independent learning.

    Any governors, system heads out there reading this? (Uh, yes — and running in the opposite direction, no doubt.)

    — Anti-hypocrisy advocate · Apr 25, 01:19 PM · #

  20. A few practical problems history teachers face. First of all, the school year has barely changed since 1900. But history has magically accumulated 100 years since then. For American history, that means that while instructional time has changed by very little, content to be covered has increased by 25% or so.

    Not only has history kept chugging along, but the world got a lot bigger for American students in the past 100 years. We can hopefully all agree that American children should know about Africa and Asia, two immense histories rarely taught in K-12 before the 1960s.

    While time and space grew larger, so too did student population. A larger percentage of 4-18 year olds are in school today than 50 years ago, bringing with them a far wider range of skills. And yet, students are still tracked into two levels of history course: general education and honors/AP/IB.

    (Often, too, course loads have increased for teachers over the past decades. Teachers once with one or two preps and four classes now have three preps and five classes, along with increased administrative responsibilities.)

    — Luther Blissett · Apr 25, 04:05 PM · #

  21. Many thanks, Luther, for addressing a fundamental question of how teaching conditions, as you point out in your parenthetical, prevent educators from achieving what they wish. Doubtless what you say here applies to teachers of many subjects, particularly at the secondary level. We’re still tied to some sort of absurd factory model for schools.

    — George K · Apr 26, 03:34 AM · #

  22. And then there was the one-room schoolhouse of so many American communities. Abraham Lincoln, etc., and even past 1900, etc.

    Much, much easier to get an education way back when all the grade levels were in one room — and the teacher even maintained the upkeep of the facilites as well.

    Yes, indeed, contemporary school conditions (with the stress from the Internet, etc.) certainly do burden teachers with so many preparations, etc. that the home schooling movement has been growing, with measurable academic success.

    We all do so really, really understand — the Jaime Escalante-s of social studies (or of any subject for that matter) are few and far between.

    Wake up, America, “Stand and Deliver”.

    — Anti-hypocrisy advocate · Apr 26, 07:54 AM · #

  23. From a personal narrative about the one-room schoolhouse: “In the afternoon we had science or social studies. However, it wasn’t taught in the earlier rural schools because it wasn’t thought to be important. After all, a child was raised in an area where all of his family and relatives were. He was expected to probably become a grown-up in that area. Roads were nearly impassable for a lot of travel, so the idea of an excursion was to go to church on Sunday or to the nearest village for supplies, or to visit relatives. Farming with livestock, especially cows that had to be milked twice daily, always meant you had to be home both times. So, there was very little need or desire on the part of farmers to go away or to learn much about the world beyond their own community. And in science, there wasn’t a great deal that was thought appropriate. Perhaps at the high school or university level, but not before. Since everyone spoke a common language in the community (though not always English), other languages, except the necessity of English, were not needed.”

    http://www.pioneersholesschool.org/pages/narrative.html

    — Luther Blissett · Apr 26, 12:06 PM · #

  24. For “rural” America, as for “urban” America, “brick and click” potentially holds answers for a good many of the real problems.

    As for perceived needs, it is a serious question whether the parents of most of the students in the “top ten” surveys discussed here perceive a need for changes in their children’s school curriculum, just as those in the story of the little schoolhouse in Comment 23 above did not.

    Further, confronted with the same sad plight of the school teachers, saddled with all this extra “knowledge” to master, as well the burden of more than one or two preparations (cf. Comments 20-21), the home-schooling parent has apparently already found workable answers to those questions.

    — Anti-hypocrisy advocate · Apr 26, 12:55 PM · #

  25. AHA: no one mentioned new knowledge to master. The point was that while the curriculum has grown, real instructional time has not.

    The home schooling parent has not found a solution to any real educational problem insofar as home schooling isn’t an option for the vast majority of parents or children.

    You can spout catchphrases like “brick and click” til the end of time. The fact that you cannot read a simple blog post (check out the actual statement I made about teaching prep loads and your own misreading of it) suggests to me that no amount of schooling can remove a head from an ass.

    — Luther Blissett · Apr 26, 08:40 PM · #

  26. On Comment 25:

    Please note that, indeed, Comment 20 does at least imply that teachers have “new knowledge to master” since the 60’s at least:

    “Not only has history kept chugging along, but the world got a lot bigger for American students in the past 100 years. We can hopefully all agree that American children should know about Africa and Asia, two immense histories rarely taught in K-12 before the 1960s.“ (emphasis supplied)

    Obviously, what had rarely been taught in the schools would also have rarely been part of the college formation experience of teachers.

    Home-schooling parents (indeed, where the option is available) have nevertheless to confront all of the school year’s required subject matters, not just a handful of preparations – or even just the subject of their own interest/specialization – and they clearly resort to both traditional methods (library research) and “click” methods (Internet) to help both themselves and their children to “cover” the curriculum. And home-schooled students appear not to suffer academically from the experience.

    My point is simply this: That the schools are not being as creative about “brick and click” as the parents of home-schoolers apparently are. And that perhaps some re-thinking of the still rather rigid and traditional structures of schools, their curriculum, and their staff deployment would appear to be in order in the Internet age.

    No personal offense to anyone intended.

    — Anti-hypocrisy advocate · Apr 26, 11:29 PM · #

  27. AHA — Sorry if I was obnoxious back there. I shouldn’t have taken things so personally.

    — Luther Blissett · Apr 27, 01:44 PM · #

  28. On Comment 27:

    No problem.

    Of course, as I type this I’m listening to the French President Sarkozy complaining that pupils in France don’t respect teachers, that they do not perform well (many are not literate or numerate at the end of primary school, one out of two fail at the university, post-secondary) — and his solution (in the face of student demonstrations in the streets for more teachers) is to plan to cut the number of teachers.

    The French President’s rationale is that the number of students is declining demographically so he is planning on reforming the teaching profession to have better teachers, not more teachers paid more.

    Now this is going to be fun to watch….

    — Anti-hypocrisy advocate · Apr 27, 01:50 PM · #

  29. P.S. to Comment 28:

    These days, C-SPAN is the most entertaining network on television…!

    — Anti-hypocrisy advocate · Apr 27, 01:55 PM · #

  30. I have been reading Susan Jacoby’s THE AGE OF UNREASON. Its early chapters are quite an education in how ambivalent and even hostile much of the citizenry in America has been toward the public support of education, despite the eloquent Jeffersonian affirmations about the importance of an educated citizenry for the health of a democracy. Following Hofstadter, Jacoby understands that as long as education can prove it makes good employees (sort of like the NCAA fashioning star football and basketball players for the pros), it will be supported generously; but when you start talking about any other goals besides fashioning employees (and I’m not, certainly, opposed to that goal) for education, well, things get a little tricky and some people get nervous. See the famous memo by the late Justice Blackmun where he was quite explicit that something had to be done about all this critiquing of capitalism bubbling up on college campuses.

    — George T. Karnezis · Apr 29, 01:20 PM · #

  31. Homeschooling works! Our four children (the eldest being ten) know Hatshepsut, Hannibal, Hadrian, Hooker, Henry and Howe. They do not, however, know of Oprah, Marilyn or Britney… Bad me.

    Our books are old, our maps are worn, our children are eager to learn.

    — Jack O'All · May 1, 09:52 AM · #

  32. Bah!

    First of all, the survey instructions: “There was only one ground rule—no presidents or first ladies,” makes no sense at all. Why exclude Washington and Lincoln? Second, and as others have said above, these names may come as much from students’ media consumption as from school curricula. Third, what time of year were these “surveys” given? I am guessing Black Histoyr month.

    The real tragedy of American higher education is that we take such an unscientific sampling seriously enough to discuss its “findings.”

    — Larry Cebula · May 4, 10:23 AM · #

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