Libertarian Teacher

Taking students beyond the textbook

I am a High School Social Studies teacher in Nebraska and I have been for 15 years. I have been one of the biggest critics of our History Social Studies standards in our state ever since they were adopted in 2003. From my perspective there were to many of them and they emphasized that students should just basically memorize important historical people, and historical events covering almost every major event in World/American history. Here is a link to the old standards.

The problems with this were legion. First, according the old standards 6th grade students were taught Ancient History, but then never again. The idea was that if you were taught it in 6th grade you would retain it for the rest of your life. This does not happen. Students may need to be exposed to things more than once in order to learn them. (hmm..insightful idea I know.:) Second, how much in depth could you take 6th graders in Ancient History?? I doubt a teacher would be able to have 6th graders dive into the complexities of the downfall of the Ancient Roman Republic and the emergence of dictatorship. Wouldn't it benefit high school students to really jump into Ancient Roman History when they are 11th graders with a teacher that knows a lot about it and can bring it to life for them? Third, there were to many standards. For example, for 9-12 World History teachers they had to teach everything from year 1000 A.D. to the Present. This is impossible if you want your students to really get anything out of it except just route memorization, which research says most students will forget 2-3 minutes after they take the multiple choice test. My perspective is that it isn't important that students learn all of history, but just that they get a great experience learning some of history.

Well, the "Taking students beyond the textbook" article in the Lincoln Journal Star reports that Nebraska has issued an early draft of the revised Social Standards and I am very pleased with them. Here is a link to the early draft of the standards. If these are adopted it looks like the history standards are very broad based and just contain three main themes that must be learned by students.

1. Understanding Chronological Thinking
2. Understanding Historical Comprehension
3. Thinking Critically About Multiple Perspectives

So if I am reading this correctly, (which I hope I am) as long as history teachers are able to get students to learn these three important skills then they are free to dive into whatever subject matter they want to in order to teach these three skills. So if I wanted to spend extra time studying Ancient Roman History, that would be fine as long as I am addressing those above skills. I think this would allow students to spend more time analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating history. This would make history more relevant to their lives, and encourage them to be critical thinkers, rather than Jeopardy masters.

I am very encouraged by this move by the Nebraska Department of Education, and hopefully this idea isn't changed by political interests.