How should kids learn about history?
A call to reinvigorate inquiry-based education
Should American public-school students learn that the country was founded on racism and benefited from the economic consequences of slavery? Or should they learn about the brilliance of its founding documents and American exceptionalism? These two approaches to history and civics education are presented as in opposition to one another, but they don’t have to be.
How to structure and promote civics education is on the minds of teachers and policymakers alike. The debate has been taken up by former U.S. secretaries of education and U.S. Supreme Court judges. President Trump's condemnation of the New York Times’ 1619 Project and his executive order establishing a federal “Advisory 1776 Commission” to promote “patriotic education” was one such debate.
As others have noted, the federal government cannot legally dictate specific curricula. Although market forces often drive educational practices, ultimately, local administrators are responsible for choosing curriculum that aligns with state standards. But framing this decision as a binary choice between adopting the 1619 Project Curriculum or what was promoted in the 1776 Report was a political distraction from a more important question.
Instead of right-wing/left-wing recriminations, the argument should focus on how to incorporate diverse perspectives, giving students the opportunity to develop critical-thinking skills and draw their own conclusions. No one curriculum should prevail. Rather multiple perspectives should be considered. But this balanced approach to history is near-impossible in our current standards-based public school system.
Since the 1983 release of A Nation at Risk, the focus of schooling has shifted to a centralized standards-based approach that utilizes standardized tests as the primary indicators of success in school. This approach prioritizes college- and career-prep over the development of critical thinking skills. Today, when a U.S. history curriculum is adopted, it must conform to the existing framework of standards-based education—whether Common Core State Standards or other similar standards adopted by states. Tests reward the “correct” answer, with little ability to assess the process by which young people form their decisions.
Standards-based education may be well-suited for essential academic skills in reading and math, but it does not support the development of critical thinking skills or preparation of students for civic participation—a vital function of the nation’s 130,000 public schools. Yet standards-based education, using tests as the universal metric, is embedded in how teachers are trained to teach. As education scholars have noted, training teachers to use a fixed set of standards to assess what students know and how they know it is not conducive to open inquiry.
A century ago, American visionary John Dewey opposed similar issues of limited curriculum, which then focused on preparing students to be workers. Dewey supported inquiry-based education—learning that is active, not passive; grounded in experience, beyond books; focused on the community, not simply traditional academics. Dewey believed that learning should engage students in questions of our time, preparing them for citizenship as adults. In Dewey’s view, the conventional power structure is flipped: students direct their own learning and teachers serve the role of fostering their intellectual growth and participation in society.
Like Dewey did in his era, many of us in the education sector recognize the importance of teaching students how to think critically, and we lament when they can't. The current debate about civics education and how to teach U.S. history is an excellent opportunity to grow that skill. Giving students already-digested information through textbooks and essays encourages them to regurgitate another perspective, not develop their own. For example, only reading Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States or Wilfred McClay’s Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story will provide students with one perspective on American history. Instead, they should read both.
To be sure, this method will be challenging to implement within the current, standards-based system, and teacher training programs and schools would need to adapt their pedagogical practices, but if we want to encourage critical thinking, returning to Dewey’s inquiry-based education is the better route.
Students who read and think critically can determine for themselves if something is backed by legitimate evidence or is fake news. Why not provide an abundance of resources—the 1776 Report, the 1619 Project, 1776 Unites, which was launched in response to the 1619 Project, and the original documents the authors used to make their arguments? Then pose the question: Which one is more convincing? Adjustments may be required to accommodate reading proficiency and time constraints, but the answer is less valuable than the process by which students explain their opinion, including supporting their arguments. That way, when students read the perspectives or interpretations of others, they will have the necessary skills to determine an argument’s integrity and an author’s point of view.
Standards-based instruction that preferences one perspective over another does not promote critical thinking skills or develop informed citizens. Inquiry-based instruction replicates real-world scenarios in which young people learn to solve problems, confront different points of view, and engage in civic conversation as independent, thinking young adults, empowering their lifelong participation in, and contribution to, American society.
From the Web
Legislation and Book Bans Target Teaching About Social Justice and Racism in Schools
“NCAC strongly opposes legislation that limits what teachers can teach and threatens the ability of students to critically engage with a diverse range of ideas and viewpoints, whether they agree or disagree with them.”
“My school, like so many others, induces students via shame and sophistry to identify primarily with their race before their individual identities are fully formed. Students are pressured to conform their opinions to those broadly associated with their race and gender and to minimize or dismiss individual experiences that don’t match those assumptions. The morally compromised status of “oppressor” is assigned to one group of students based on their immutable characteristics. In the meantime, dependency, resentment and moral superiority are cultivated in students considered “oppressed.”
All of this is done in the name of “equity,” but it is the opposite of fair. In reality, all of this reinforces the worst impulses we have as human beings: our tendency toward tribalism and sectarianism that a truly liberal education is meant to transcend.”
Teaching Students to Engage with Opposing Viewpoints
“For many students, especially the significant number who are dual-enrollment teenagers still finding their sense of identity, this is the first time they’ve ever been asked to situate themselves in the political world. For the adult learners, these exercises can often ignite challenging conversations about why we need to think about “social identity” in the first place. As students engage in these explorations, the genius of the community college culture emerges as our conversation invites young and old, politically engaged and politically resistant, to talk about who they are.
We are all often surprised by the views that emerge during these conversations; college students have a reputation for skewing liberal, but my students live surrounded by a political culture deeply skeptical of government and are often conservative. The differences in age, life experience, and family structure at an open-access institution add additional layers onto these conversations. Suffice it to say, the community college classroom is one of the last places where truly different people can engage in meaningful dialogue around topics most of us avoid in polite company.”