Funny timing for this article. Just yesterday, my 4th grade level team was informed that our school in Colorado was selected for the Social Studies CMAS assessment. Now teachers are scrambling to squeeze Social Studies back into the schedule for the test in April. Why are we scrambling? Oh, yes, because of the hyper-focus on math and reading blocks. In prioritizing tested subjects, we’ve pushed Social Studies and Science to the brink. The irony is that students haven’t been adequately exposed to those subjects precisely because of the pressures of testing. For years I’ve wondered why we can’t integrate subjects across the curriculum. Science is reading. Social Studies is reading. These disciplines build critical thinking, vocabulary, background knowledge, and comprehension — the very skills standardized tests claim to measure. Moments like this make me question how long I can continue in this profession. I became a teacher to cultivate curiosity and a love of learning, not to narrow the curriculum to what is tested. The constant scrambling and shifting priorities are exhausting, and at times they make me want to walk away from teaching altogether. Writing is also an area I'm greatly concerned for. What are we doing to our youth?
Thanks for the context of what's been happening in your class. Now, teaching choices revolve around what's on a county assessment. The curricula is very fragmented and disjointed...and boring because there are small to no connections between content areas. The content and those connections haven't been taught. As a result, learners don't have the knowledge to discuss things. As a result, there's little interest, which is so important. For example, my 4th graders were shocked when at their age, I told them I once talked about being drafted to the Vietnam war with classmates. What would we do? Be a draft dodger? Etc. They wanted to learn more. It was a quick aside, and they knew next to nothing about that recent history, but they were suddenly interested. I wish I could do that with history lessons.
Thank you, Natalie, once again for highlighting the importance of teaching history, civics and social studies in younger grades. And for highlighting my article. There's more context to what you quoted from me. I remember clearly in my first year of teaching high school the 11th grader who didn't know who won the American Revolution. It was in a tracked, "low level" course, and the rest of the class seemed to think it was a fair question. I remember that when it came time to reviewing for the final exam, she still didn't know the answer. But by then, the rest of the class turned on her because they now knew the answer. That, sadly, was how I measured some level of success with those students (minus the one girl).
If there was meaningful instruction in the stories of history beginning with kindergarten, I cannot fathom how my above anecdote would be possible in a high school.
I've been smuggling American history into my class in 3rd grade and students get super interested in it. The state doesn't really make us do this social studies is so weird. Our standards are 100 miles wide and half an inch deep.
Also this year we had a school wide project on major historical events for the 250th birthday stuff and I had to like teach a few of my teammates a lot of history especially since it was for a school wide thing.
Worse yet: in excessively “blue” [progressive] Oregon, civics has been reframed entirely to fit political ideology. Our 2024 Social Science Standards describe the USA not as a Liberal Democratic Republic but as a “plural democracy.” The word “republic” does not even appear in the standards to describe America. *Social* Democracy, not *Liberal* Democracy is what’s envisioned, keeping with our far-Left Governor’s politics. The *stated* goal is “decentering whiteness” — which includes divorcing our history from its roots in the Enlightenment of Western Europe, notably the British Isles. Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality frame the standards.
We could start our civics education by understanding that the writers of our Constitution did not establish a democracy. They established a republic -- on purpose. In fact, they believed that democracies promote "mob rule." They believed in liberty above all else, freedom from government interference in our pursuit of happiness. I'm not even sure they would agree it's the function of government to provide a free, universal public education. I am pretty sure nobody cares.
While I appreciate Traub's analysis (or at least this re-telling of it), it would be nice if a prominent education writer could acknowledge that poor education is probably not at the center of our crisis of democracy. Non-voting participation and confidence in democratic systems is slipping in every western nation, even those that do a better job educating their young people than we do. The argument that democracy is slipping because people don't know anything seems like a tone-deaf, knee-jerk, anti-populist response when what people have actually lost is faith that the system can actually deliver any sort of change.
Good public schools are great and important, but we can't put everything on them. I look forward to reading his book, and completely agree that civics education needs to be stronger in the US, but I think teachers need to start really pushing back on the line that this is all on us.
I agree that it's not "all on us." But I firmly believe that education is at the root of it. The more education folks have, the more likely they are to vote. A better understanding of history--how our democratic system HAS worked in the past--can go a long way in restoring that confidence.
Funny timing for this article. Just yesterday, my 4th grade level team was informed that our school in Colorado was selected for the Social Studies CMAS assessment. Now teachers are scrambling to squeeze Social Studies back into the schedule for the test in April. Why are we scrambling? Oh, yes, because of the hyper-focus on math and reading blocks. In prioritizing tested subjects, we’ve pushed Social Studies and Science to the brink. The irony is that students haven’t been adequately exposed to those subjects precisely because of the pressures of testing. For years I’ve wondered why we can’t integrate subjects across the curriculum. Science is reading. Social Studies is reading. These disciplines build critical thinking, vocabulary, background knowledge, and comprehension — the very skills standardized tests claim to measure. Moments like this make me question how long I can continue in this profession. I became a teacher to cultivate curiosity and a love of learning, not to narrow the curriculum to what is tested. The constant scrambling and shifting priorities are exhausting, and at times they make me want to walk away from teaching altogether. Writing is also an area I'm greatly concerned for. What are we doing to our youth?
Thanks for the context of what's been happening in your class. Now, teaching choices revolve around what's on a county assessment. The curricula is very fragmented and disjointed...and boring because there are small to no connections between content areas. The content and those connections haven't been taught. As a result, learners don't have the knowledge to discuss things. As a result, there's little interest, which is so important. For example, my 4th graders were shocked when at their age, I told them I once talked about being drafted to the Vietnam war with classmates. What would we do? Be a draft dodger? Etc. They wanted to learn more. It was a quick aside, and they knew next to nothing about that recent history, but they were suddenly interested. I wish I could do that with history lessons.
Thank you, Natalie, once again for highlighting the importance of teaching history, civics and social studies in younger grades. And for highlighting my article. There's more context to what you quoted from me. I remember clearly in my first year of teaching high school the 11th grader who didn't know who won the American Revolution. It was in a tracked, "low level" course, and the rest of the class seemed to think it was a fair question. I remember that when it came time to reviewing for the final exam, she still didn't know the answer. But by then, the rest of the class turned on her because they now knew the answer. That, sadly, was how I measured some level of success with those students (minus the one girl).
If there was meaningful instruction in the stories of history beginning with kindergarten, I cannot fathom how my above anecdote would be possible in a high school.
I've been smuggling American history into my class in 3rd grade and students get super interested in it. The state doesn't really make us do this social studies is so weird. Our standards are 100 miles wide and half an inch deep.
Also this year we had a school wide project on major historical events for the 250th birthday stuff and I had to like teach a few of my teammates a lot of history especially since it was for a school wide thing.
Worse yet: in excessively “blue” [progressive] Oregon, civics has been reframed entirely to fit political ideology. Our 2024 Social Science Standards describe the USA not as a Liberal Democratic Republic but as a “plural democracy.” The word “republic” does not even appear in the standards to describe America. *Social* Democracy, not *Liberal* Democracy is what’s envisioned, keeping with our far-Left Governor’s politics. The *stated* goal is “decentering whiteness” — which includes divorcing our history from its roots in the Enlightenment of Western Europe, notably the British Isles. Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality frame the standards.
We could start our civics education by understanding that the writers of our Constitution did not establish a democracy. They established a republic -- on purpose. In fact, they believed that democracies promote "mob rule." They believed in liberty above all else, freedom from government interference in our pursuit of happiness. I'm not even sure they would agree it's the function of government to provide a free, universal public education. I am pretty sure nobody cares.
While I appreciate Traub's analysis (or at least this re-telling of it), it would be nice if a prominent education writer could acknowledge that poor education is probably not at the center of our crisis of democracy. Non-voting participation and confidence in democratic systems is slipping in every western nation, even those that do a better job educating their young people than we do. The argument that democracy is slipping because people don't know anything seems like a tone-deaf, knee-jerk, anti-populist response when what people have actually lost is faith that the system can actually deliver any sort of change.
Good public schools are great and important, but we can't put everything on them. I look forward to reading his book, and completely agree that civics education needs to be stronger in the US, but I think teachers need to start really pushing back on the line that this is all on us.
I agree that it's not "all on us." But I firmly believe that education is at the root of it. The more education folks have, the more likely they are to vote. A better understanding of history--how our democratic system HAS worked in the past--can go a long way in restoring that confidence.