Imperiling the Republic: The Fate of U.S. History Instruction under Common Core

8/11/2019 Imperiling the Republic: The Fate of U.S. History Instruction under Common Core

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IMPERILING THE REPUBLIC:

THE FATE OF U.S. HISTORYINSTRUCTION UNDER COMMON CORE

by Ralph Ketcham, Anders Lewis and Sandra Stotsky

White Paper No. 121

August 2014


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Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research

P MPioneer Institute is an independent, non-partisan, privately funded research organization that seeks

to improve the quality of life in Massachusetts through civic discourse and intellectually rigorous,

data-driven public policy solutions based on free market principles, individual liberty and responsibility,

and the ideal of effective, limited and accountable government.

Pioneer Institute is a tax-exempt 501(c)3 organization funded through the donations of individuals, foundations and businessescommitted to the principles Pioneer espouses. o ensure its independence, Pioneer does not accept government grants.

Tis paper is a publication of the Center for School Reform,which seeks to increase

the education options available to parents and students, drive system-wide reform, and

ensure accountability in public education. Te Centers work builds on Pioneers legacy as

a recognized leader in the charter public school movement, and as a champion of greater

academic rigor in Massachusetts elementary and secondary schools. Current initiatives

promote choice and competition, school-based management, and enhanced academic

performance in public schools.

Te Center for Better Governmentseeks limited, accountable government by promoting

competitive delivery of public services, elimination of unnecessary regulation, and a focus

on core government functions. Current initiatives promote reform of how the state builds,

manages, repairs and finances its transportation assets as well as public employee benefit

reform.

Te Center for Economic Opportunityseeks to keep Massachusetts competitive by

promoting a healthy business climate, transparent regulation, small business creation in

urban areas and sound environmental and development policy. Current initiatives promote

market reforms to increase the supply of affordable housing, reduce the cost of doing

business, and revitalize urban areas.

Te Center for Health Care Solutionsseeks to refocus the Massachusetts conversation

about health care costs away from government-imposed interventions, toward market-

based reforms. Current initiatives include driving public discourse on Medicaid;

presenting a strong consumer perspective as the state considers a dramatic overhaul of the

health care payment process; and supporting thoughtful tort reforms.


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Imperiling the Republic: Te Fate of U.S. History Instruction Under Common Core

ABLE OF CONENS

Executive Summary 5

I. Te Role of History in the American Experiment

in Democracy 6

II.Te Crisis in the Study of U.S. History 9

III. How Common Core Treatens the Study ofU.S. History

18

IV.Te Founders View of Federalism and aCommon Core

23

V. Causes of Poor Reading inHigh School

26

VI. Recommendations 27

About the Authors 28

Endnotes 29


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E S

Te Founders of the American experiment indemocracy assumed that understanding Americanhistory was essential in a Union where public-spirited citizenship and the capacity to live under

laws wholesome and necessary for the publicgood would characterize the new nation. oproceed without the knowledge of history, in their

view, was a sure path to a tragedy or a farce.

Te Common Core standards for Englishlanguage arts provide standards for the Englishlanguage arts but also literacy standards forhistory. Tis report analyses these literacy standardsand offers the following solutions to the problemCommon Cores architects sought to solvehow

to help poor readers in high school become collegeand career ready citizens of this country aftergraduation from high school.

1. Schools can establish secondary reading classesseparate from the English and other subjectclasses. Students who read little and cannotor wont read high school level textbookscan be given further reading instructionin the secondary grades by teachers withstrong academic backgrounds (like each ForAmerica volunteers) who have been trainedto teach reading skills in the context of theacademic subjects students are taking. Its noteasy to do, but it is doable.

2. A second solution may be for schools toexpand the notion of choice to include whatother countries do to address the needs of

young adolescents who prefer to work withtheir hands and do not prefer to read or

write much. Alternative high school curriculastarting in grade 9 have become increasingly

popular and successful in Massachusetts.Tere are waiting lists for most of the regionalvocational technical high schools in the state.Te trades they learn in grades 9-12 motivatethem sufficiently so they now pass the tests inthe basic high school subjects that all studentsare required to take for a high school diplomaand over half now go on to some form of post-secondary education.

3. Te most important solution to the problem ofpoor readingand an inadequate U.S. historycurriculumin high school is for state boardsof education, governors, and state legislaturesto disallow public schools to use the AdvancedPlacement United States History (APUSH)curriculum just issued by the College Boardfor the most able readers in high school,and to require heterogeneous courses in U.S.history in which all students, high- or low-income, native or immigrant, study togetherthe common civic core spelled out in PaulGagnonsEducating Democracy, issued in 2003by the Albert Shanker Institute.

Surely the American Federation of eachers couldassemble afestschriftwritten at a high school level

to honor a historian who dedicated his academiclife to advancing the education of the low-incomestudents he taught in the Boston area. Self-government cannot survive without citizens whoare willing to ask informed questions in public ofeducational policy makers and demand answers.


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. T R H A E D

When asked to comment on and support a planfor public education in the new western state of

Kentucky in 1822, James Madison, then widelyrespected as a leading founder of the republicanUnion declared Independent in 1776 and theformulator and expositor of its Constitution,responded with a theory of good republicanself-government. It required, Madison insisted,intelligent, responsible, public-spirited citizens,

who would have knowledge of the globe weinhabit, the nations among which it is divided, andthe characters and customs which divide them.1

Education, Madison insisted, cannot be too muchapplauded. A government deriving its powerfrom the people, and a people without popularinformation, or the means of acquiring it, [was]but a Prologue to a Farce or a ragedy, or perhapsboth, he asserted. A people who mean to betheir own Governors, must arm themselves withthe power which knowledge gives. His pleasureat Kentuckys plan was not a little enhanced, hesaid, by the enlightened patriotism which is nowproviding for the State; a plan embracing every

class of Citizens. Cheaper and nearer seats ofLearning, he explained, would allow parents withslender incomesto place their sons in a courseof education putting them on a level with the sonsof the Richest. Tis would provide LearnedInstitutionsdiffused throughout the entireSociety, the education needed for the commonpurposes of life. Tis would allow for wherever a

youth was ascertained to possess talents meritingan education which his parents could not afford, he

would be carried forward at the public expence,

to the completion of his studies at the highestseminaries.

Madison thus applied his promotion of educationto all citizens regardless of wealth (later formalizedin systems of universal public education), and tothe needs not only of citizens and political leaders,but also to the development of talents for the

various professions and occupations that would

flourish in a free and self-governing society. Aplan of education encompassing these broad,history-focused, objectives, Madison believed, wasthe only way to avoid the Farce or ragedy of anuneducated self-governing electorate.

In turning to the content of the proper educationfor free and self-governing citizens, Madison,like his fellow philosopher-historians JohnAdams and Tomas Jefferson, began with theircollegiate studies at Princeton, Harvard, and

William and Mary respectively, as they learnedthe ancient languages of the Greek historiansHerodotus, Tucydides, Polybius, and Plutarch,and of the Romans Livy, Sallust, Caesar, and

acitus. When Madison and Jefferson drew upa list of 307 works they proposed for a Library

of the Continental Congress in 1783 (blockedby the anti-government-spending delegates),they included books by the latest, often radicalEuropean historians such as Pierre Bayle,Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Barbeyrac, as well ascontemporary English and Scottish historianssuch as Gibbon, Hutcheson, Robertson, Priestley,Hume, and Adam Smith. Te list also includedthe four books of elementary right that Jefferson

would declare were at the root of Americanthinking about government at the time of the

Declaration of Independence: Aristotle, Cicero,Sydney, and Locke.

Finally the two Virginians recommended longlists of histories, exploration accounts, tracts,laws, and treaties about the Americas since theColumbian discovery. Ten lawmakers might

work with knowledge of the needs, dangers, andaccomplishments of the people from whom theyderived their just powers of government. Testudy and understanding of history, that is, was

deemed essential to those taking part in the publiclife of the self-governing republic formed underthe Constitution.

A study of history, and a consciousness of itsimportance in understanding the nation conceivedin liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all .. . are created equal in 1776, and the Constitutionthat became its operating framework, was of great


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importance to the founding generation. BenjaminFranklin, for example, as a nine-year-old growingup in Boston in 1715, heard Increase Matherpreach about the rumored death of that wickedold Persecutor of Gods People, Lewis XIV.

When sixty and moving toward the Declaration ofIndependence, Franklin remembered this sermonas his first recollection of commentary on publicaffairs. It placed not only historical knowledge atthe center of his world view but also a view thatsaw the world as dominated by a struggle betweenpersecutors of the people and a communityseeking to live in political freedom. Tus Franklins

vastly important and useful public career arosein part from both his knowledge of history anda moral perspective on it. Tree years after his

recollection of Mathers sermon, he signed theDeclaration of Independence, and eleven yearsafter that the Constitution.

Franklin noted in his to-become-famousautobiography that though he had had only twomonths of formal schooling, from a child I wasfond of Reading and all the little money thatcame into my Hands was ever laid out in Books.Apprenticed to his brothers printing shop, he hadaccess to a large bounty of books and pamphletsthat he stayed up nights to read through as much

as he could. From an English translation ofPlutarchs Liveshe learned not only the facts of thehistory of the Ancient world, but also its concernfor the commonweal and for the public characterof its leaders. Plutarch admired leaders who werenot only great but also good. Tus he extolledCiceros career in the Roman Senate, especiallyfor showing how invincible right and justice are[when] eloquently set forth, but condemned himfor acquiescing in Caesars dictatorship, a moregrievous and greater tyranny than that of Catiline,

which Cicero had led in suppressing.2

From the persistent moral perspective of thishistory Franklin learned important lessons in howto fulfill diligently his dual citizenship roles, to ruleand be ruled, with honor, responsibility, and publicspirita message he conveyed to the members ofthe Constitutional Convention of 1787 when, inconsidering suffrage requirements, he asked that

they do nothing to depress the virtue and publicspirit of our common people; of which they haddisplayed a great deal during the war.

urning to modern history, Franklinsunderstanding came from what he called R.

Burtons Historical Collectionssmall ChapmansBooks and cheap, 40 or 50 in all. Written and soldfor the unsophisticated market, drama, excitement,marvels, patriotism, villainy, and heroism fill everypage. One cheap volume, Te History of NineWorthies of the World, tells of nine famous soldiers:Hector of roy, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar,

Joshua, David, Judas Maccabeus, King Arthur,Charlemagne, and King Godfrey of Jerusalem.

For more recent English history, Burton told of

Drakes murderous passages along the SpanishMain in he Life and Dangerous Voyages of SirFrancis Drake,but claimed nonetheless thatDrakes Civility to the Conquered had oftenbeen experienced. Franklins own, later version ofthis precept was there never was a good war or abad peace. In another volume Burton deploredCromwells military dictatorship while praisinghis singular courageand greatness of mind. Ina volume published during the reign of CharlesII, Puritan excesses are further condemned and

the execution of Charles I, described with intensedrama, is called a horrid and nefarious act.

Writing after the Glorious Revolution of 1688,Burton shows inA History of the House of Orangehow the glorious ancestors of King WilliamIII of Holland had rescued his country, andthen England itself, from the FrenchandSlavery. Tus England enjoyed a Governmentfounded upon Law and Justice; A Governmentcalculated for the support of the Protestant Interest

throughout the World. In case his readers mighthave missed the moral and principled lessonsfor actors in history, Burton explained in TeUnfortunate Court Favorites of Englandand TeWhole Duty of Youthhow Queen Elizabeths Essexand Charles Is Strafford had compromised theirintegrity to flatter their masters and afterwardreceived their just rewards from the publicexecutioner. In contrast, the lives of Isaac, Joseph,


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and several princes of England showed the justmerits of being good, obedient, pious, diligent, andhonest. Poor Richard would not disagree.

Franklin elaborated the effects of his early readingof history in his 1749 Proposals Relating to the

Education of the Youth in Pensilvania. He explainedthat the Causes of the Rise or Fall of any MansCharacter, Fortune, Power, &c., . . . indeed thegeneral natural endency of Reading goodHistory, must be, to fix in the Minds of Youthdeep Impressions of the Beauty and Usefulnessof Virtue of all Kinds, Publick Spirit, Fortitude,&c.History, he added, will also give Occasionto expatiate on the Advantage of Civil Orders andConstitutions, how Men and their Properties areprotected by joining in Societies and establishing

Government; their Industry encouraged andrewarded, Arts invented, and Life made morecomfortable: Te Advantages of Liberty, Mischiefsof Licentiousness, Benefits arising from good Lawsand a due Execution of Justice, &c. Tus maythe first Principles of sound Politicks be fixd inthe Minds of Youth. Te study of history for itsown sake, then, was the indispensable path to theupright character of the public-spirited citizen andto the establishment of a good government of justand socially useful laws.

Te future father of the Constitution, JamesMadison, had acquired a strong general knowledgeof history in preparatory school and college, buthe turned especially to it in his effort to deepenhis understanding of public affairs as the coloniesmoved toward the Declaration of Independence.He sought from his college friend in Philadelphiacopies of Adam FergusonsAn Essay on the Historyof Civil Society and Joseph PriestleysAn Essay onthe First Principles of Government, books that would

prepare him to take learned part in the Virginiaconventions and legislatures sure to come withIndependence. In his most momentous use ofhistory for public purposes, though, in the monthsbefore the Constitutional Convention of 1787, hegathered around him not only his own growinglibrary, but also the literary cargo of books

Jefferson had carefully selected for him from thebook stalls of Paris, London, and Amsterdam.

Madison had at his disposal the latestEnlightenment, multi-volume works of Frenchscholarship such as Diderots EncylopedieMethodique and deTous Historie Universalle,and other histories reflecting the critical spirit ofVoltaire and the French philosophes. Madisonalso had available to him classical works such asPlutarchs Livesand the histories of Polybius,thehistorical orations of Demosthenes and Cicero,and modern Whiggish ( Jeffersons term) historiessuch as Sir William emples United Provincesof the Netherlandsand Abbe Raynals History of

England. From this study he compiled a bookletof forty-one pocket-sized pages Of Ancient andModern Confederacies that he used in 1787-1788at the Federal Convention and at the Virginia

Ratification Convention.He included the public in his linkage of historicalknowledge to the well-being of the common goodof the nation by substantially including his study ofthe ancient and modern confederacies in Federalist18, 19, and 20. He learned from this study that asovereign confederation of sovereign states (as theArticles of Confederation was) was a solecismin theory, and in practice was subversive of theorder and ends of civil society substituting thedestructive coercion of the sword, in the place of

the mild and salutary coercion of the magistracy.

In a similar study of the Vices of the PoliticalSystem of the United States, Madison gatheredthe extensive collection of not only the laws,debates, and treaties of the Continental Congress,but also those of each of the thirteen states, plusany histories of the states already in print heand Jefferson had been mindful to have in theirproposed Library of Congress. Concentratingon the perverseness of the states, he catalogued

their quarrels with each other, their defiance offederal measures, and their violation of solemninternational agreements, of national measuresfor internal improvements and of regulation ofcommerce.

Te result was that in the eyes of history and ofother nations, the United States had lost sight ofits general welfare and of the need for a disciplined


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respect for law. Te need was clear, he wroteWashington a month before they each took theirseats in the Constitutional Convention of 1787(Franklin was already there), since an individualindependence of the States is utterly irreconcilable

with their aggregate sovereignty, it was necessaryat once to support a due supremacy of the nationalauthority, and not exclude the local authorities

whenever they can be subordinately useful.3Telessons of history confirmed that a more perfectUnion was necessary.

Te founders insisted and assumed, then, thatunderstanding human, especially American history,

was essential in a Union conceived in libertyand dedicated to the proposition that all arecreated equal where public-spirited citizenship

and the capacity to live under laws wholesomeand necessary for the public good (the firstspecific aspiration stated in the Declaration ofIndependence) would characterize the new nation.

o proceed without the knowledge of history thatundergirded essential public-spirited citizenshipand good laws was a sure path to a tragedy ora farce. All would have agreed on the sharedobligation of all social agencies, government andnon-government, public and private, to fosterthese qualities. Tus Franklins aspiration might

be achieved that the first Principles of a soundPoliticks might be fixed in the Minds of Youth.

. T C S U.S. H

U.S. history is in trouble. Tough manyAmericans take their children to the battlefieldof Gettysburg, read the latest book by historianDavid McCullough, or watch the latest video onthe History Channel, the teaching and learningof history in our nations schools is in a state ofdisrepair. Americas Founders would be deeplytroubled. Madison, perhaps, would wonder if wehave reached the point of farce or tragedy thathe worried about a nation with a democraticpolitical system but one with a populace lacking inhistorical and civic knowledge.

Te signs of trouble are widespread. At theelementary level, the National Council for the

Social Studies (NCSS) has warned of a wholesaleloss of instructional time resulting from the focuson mathematics and reading in the 2001 No ChildLeft Behind Act and in the Common Core StateStandards adopted by over 45 states. Te NCSShas also noted that abundant research bears outthe sad reality that fewer and fewer young people,particularly students of color and students inpoverty, are receiving a high quality social studieseducation, despite the central role of social studiesin preparing students for the responsibilities ofcitizenship. According to one recent and massivestudy, elementary students spend less than 3.5hours a week on social studies. We do not,one elementary social studies teacher noted havetime and no one in the district cares about

social studies.

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Te teaching and learning of civics and history(let alone the amorphous subject of socialstudies) is not a priority in our elementaryschools, nor a priority among most of our nationsleaders. A bipartisan group of scholars knownas the Commission on Youth Voting and CivilKnowledge recently issued a report in whichthey noted that Civic education for most policymakers is a low priority. Te overwhelmingmajority of states, the writers of the report stated,

do not assess school and student performance inthe field of social studies or history. Further, theoverwhelming majority of states do not requirecertification in U.S. government for governmentteachers.5Another recent study conducted bythe Center for Information and Research onCivic Learning and Engagement found equallydepressing results. Education in social studies, thereport concluded, is not a priority at the state ornational level. In 2001, the report noted, only 34states administered social studies assessments. By2012-2013 that number had dropped to 21.6

Absent a focus on social studies, history, or civicsat all levels of our K-12 public school system itis not surprising that student knowledge of ourown nations history is minimal. For 25 years, infact, student scores on the National Assessmentof Educational Progress (NAEP) tests havebeen dismal. In 1986, for example, 60 percent of


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seniors failed to understand that the goal of theFederalist Paperswas to support ratification ofthe Constitution. In 1995 more than 80 percentof students in all tested grades failed to achieve aproficient rating (a rating that demonstrates solidacademic performance.) In 2006, only 13 percentof seniors scores proficient and in 2010, only 12percent of seniors scored proficient. Amazingly, the2010 NAEP test demonstrated that almost 100percent of graduating seniors could not explain theimportance of Brown v. Board of Education.7

A few leading Americans have voiced concernsover these trends. In 2008, former Supreme Court

Justice Sandra Day OConnor and CongressmanLee Hamilton of Indiana wrote that a healthydemocracy requires informed, knowledgeable

citizens but too many people today do notunderstand how our political system works.8In a 2011 article, OConnor and U.S. Secretaryof Education Arne Duncan wrote that Civicknowledge is not inherited through the gene pool.It is learned at school and at the dinner table.And, too often, our schools are doing a poor jobof transmitting civic knowledge.9OConnorand Duncan also pointed out that the crisis ofhistorical and civics-based learning is most acuteamong African Americans and Hispanics. NAEP

statistics confirm this. On the 2010 NAEP testsover 50 percent of Hispanic 12th graders andover 60 percent of African Americans failed toachieve a basic understanding of civics.10Resultsfor African Americans and Hispanics were similaron the 2010 NAEP U.S. history test. o earn ascore that demonstrates a basic understandingof U.S. history content required a cut score of 294.

Te average score for African Americans was 268.For Hispanic Americans it was 275. For whiteAmericans it was 296.11

Such appalling gaps in educational achievementon issues that are fundamental to the life ofour democracy warrant extra state and nationalattention. Instead, state and national leaders seemto be looking the other way. NAEP administrators,for example, have decided to eliminate two of theirU.S. history and civics assessments (for grade 4 andgrade 12). Massachusetts, which has one of the

highest ranked set of history standards for K-12,has totally suspended its history assessments.12

Te crisis of history extends all the way to theCollege Board and a course taken by almosthalf a million high school students. Startingin the fall of 2014, the College Board will beimplementing a re-designed Advanced PlacementU.S. History curriculum in which U.S. history hasbeen completely distorted. We discuss this newcurriculum in detail later.

History teachers see that their subject playssecond fiddle to mathematics and English. Teyalso see that a core part of American history (thephilosophical and historical antecedents to theConstitutional period, as well as the contentiousissues with which the Framers grappled) has

been deliberately minimized or distorted by theCollege Board in its redesigned A.P.U.S. historycurriculum. How did a nation that once believedthe learning of history was fundamental to thesuccess of a democracy become a nation in whichthe evolution of democracy and of a republicanform of government is minimized, ignored, left tochance, or politicized?

A. T H H E

Prior to the American Revolution, existing schools

focused on religious instruction. New Englandcolonies led the way. Te Puritans who came toMassachusetts in the 1600s believed that reading

was essential for all members of their religiouscommunities so that they could understand theBible. Puritans established the nations first publichigh school (Boston Latin School in 1635) andits first college (Harvard College in 1636) to trainthe lawyers and ministers needed in the colony.Puritans later required the establishment oflocally-supported elementary and grammar schoolsas towns became incorporated. A hornbook(a wooden paddle with lessons tacked on andcovered by a piece of transparent horn) was usedfor decades to teach Puritan children how to readthe Bible. Troughout the 1600s and 1700s, mostcolonists received little to no history education.

Te American Revolution helped change this.Te founders of our experiment in democracy


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insisted that its success depended upon aneducated citizenry. People needed knowledge torule themselves. Greater knowledge, includinggreater historical knowledge, would create bettercitizenscitizens who could protect Americasfragile experiment in freedom. Preach, Jefferson

wrote, a crusade against ignorance.Establishand improve the law for educating the commonpeople.General education will enable every manto judge for himself what will secure or endangerhis freedom. Jefferson also noted that If a nationexpects to be ignorant and free, it expects whatnever was and never will be. eachers and writers,the Founders insisted, need to educate Americans.One way to do this, Noah Webster believed, was tobanish British textbooks and use books written by

Americans. For America in her infancy to adoptthe maxims of the old Webster wrote, would beto stamp the wrinkles of old age on the bloom of

youthBegin with the infant in his cradle. Let thefirst word he lisps be Washington.13

After the Revolution, more educators ralliedaround the ideas of our nations Founders.In Massachusetts, Horace Mann led effortsto create the first common school system schools that would be supported by taxpayersand teach a common curriculum. In the 1830sand 1840s, Mann (who became the states firstsecretary of education) was concerned that theideas of Jefferson and Webster were not beingimplemented. Many children, he argued, receivedno schooling at all and the schools that existed

were often in poor shape. Students, in turn, sat forlong hours on benches and did little more thanpractice writing, learn the alphabet, and memorizetexts. Te learning of history was, at best, anafterthought. Deep historical content was notin the curriculumif a curriculum even existed.

o change this, Mann urged the creation ofcommon schools that would provide all children anopportunity to acquire the knowledge that wouldhelp them advance in society. Education, Mannargued, is the equalizer of the conditions of men,the great balance wheel of the social machinery.14

In 1852, Massachusetts became the first state inthe nation to require all children to attend school

(they could be private or public). Along withreformers like Mann in Massachusetts, reformersin New York, including Governor Silas Wright,called for the creation of common schools for thepurpose of imparting knowledge to all studentsso that they could become better citizens andsustain Americas democratic experiment. On thecareful cultivation in our schools, of the minds ofthe young, Wright declared, the entire success orabsolute failure of the great experiment of self-government is wholly dependent.15

In response to the efforts of reformers and inresponse to the concerns many Americans had

with the rising numbers of immigrants who, manyfelt, did not have the habits and values needed forself-government, common schools grew in number

across the states. More and more children beganto receive at least some education. Still, the historythat students learned was limited. Many studentsread from popular books such asMcGuffeys EclecticReaders that were light on history but emphasizedmoral tales focused on admirable personality traits.

19th-century educators who did support theteaching of history did so in an effort to instill acommon knowledge that all citizens would needto fulfill their democratic responsibilities. Charles

Goodrich, a writer of popular 19th-centurytextbooks, declared that his goal was to makestudents so familiar with the lives and sayingsof famous Americans that they will have nodifficulty in understanding any modern referenceto them.16One popular history textbook thatteachers used for many years was Salma HalesHistory of the United States. Hale made his goalsclear. Te preservation of American freedom, he

wrote, depended on the universal diffusion ofknowledge and this truth should sink deep into

the hearts of the old and the young. Americancitizens, he continued, should never forget theawful responsibilities resting upon them.othem is committed an experiment, successfulhitherto, the final result of which must have apowerful influence upon the destiny of mankind;if favorable and happy, the whole civilized world

will be free; if adverse, despotism and darkness willagain over shadow it.17


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By 1900 common schools existed across the nation.Spending on schools increased as did studentenrollment, spurred on by increasing immigration.

Tough history education was limited, there waswidespread acknowledgment among educatorsthat the teaching and learning of history meriteda growing place in the school curriculum. In 1899,for example, the American Historical Associationcreated the Committee of Seven to examine thehigh school history curriculum and make proposalsfor reform. Te committees report recommendedfour years of history at the high school level:ancient history in grade 9, medieval and modernEurope in grade 10, English history in grade 11,and American history and civics in grade 12.18

Te Committee of Sevens report was a moment

of promise for history educators. It did not lastlong. At the turn of the century a new groupof progressive educators began an attack uponthe teaching of rigorous academic history thatcontinues to this day and, in many respects, hasnow triumphed. In 1913 a committee led by

Tomas Jesse Jones, a Welsh immigrant deeplyinterested in the education of African Americans,created a report titled Cardinal Principles ofSecondary Education. Jones and other membersof the committee believed that education had to be

made relevant to students. And history, accordingto Jones, was not relevant to the vast majority ofstudents who would, after a few years of schooling,go off into factories and never have to botherthemselves with the boring, arcane facts of thepast. In place of history, schools should offer socialstudies classes that would help children accepttheir lot in life by teaching them skills they wouldneed in the factories of the modern world.19

Te anti-intellectual sentiment expressed by

Jones eventually became part of a report createdby the National Education Associations (NEA)Commission on the Reorganization of SecondaryEducation, issued in 1918, and reflective of thelarger progressive trend in the field of education.

Te authors of the NEA report argued thatthe purpose of schools was to promote socialefficiency. Schools had to help each student findhis place and use that place to shape both himself

and society toward ever nobler ends. One way todo this was to do replace history with social studies

which the report defined as subject matter relateddirectly to the organization and development ofhuman society, and to man as a member of socialgroups. History was too far removed from theimmediate needs and wants of children. It wastoo arcane, too academic, and too likely to involveabstract thoughts. Te fragile minds of so manyAmerican youngsters simply could not handlehistory. A separate Committee on Social Studiesargued that Facts, conditions, theories, andactivities that do not contribute rather directly tothe appreciation of methods of human bettermenthave no claim. Social studies, the NEA insisted,had to trump history.20

Progressive reformers latched onto newly createdIntelligence Quotient (I.Q.) tests to argue thatmost students were not suited to serious academicsubjects such as history. It was far better, theyinsisted, to train people for real-world work. Tehead of the Stanford University Department ofEducation argued that We should give up theexceedingly democratic idea that all are equal andthat our society is devoid of classes. Te employeetends to remain an employee; the wage earnertends to remain a wage earner21

Te progressives gained momentum. In responseto their theories, state after state and districtafter district began to dramatically revise theircurriculum, eliminating core academic subjectssuch as history and replacing themas Virginiadidwith activities focused on the majorfunctions of social life, or the Production ofGoods and Services and Distribution of theReturns of Production. At the elementary level,schools ditched content in favor of fun-filled

activities like block building.22Schools also beganto track students. Only those deemed worthy

would receive rigorous academic training inall subjects, including history. Some critics ofprogressivism sought to challenge these changes.


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B. P W W II C H E

After World War IIand with more and morestudents attending school (80 percent of teenagers

were enrolled in high school in 1950)a few

academics wondered if we were on the verge ofproducing a large class of citizens without thenecessary knowledge to be self-governing citizensin a democratic society.23A leading critic ofthe progressive trend was University of Illinoishistorian Arthur Bestor. Bestor sought to rallyopposition to progressivism by calling for a greateremphasis on academic subjects for all students.One can search history and biography in vain,Bestor argued, for evidence that men or womenever accomplished anything original, creative,

or significant by virtue of narrowly conceivedvocational training or of educational programs thataimed merely at life adjustment.24Te Sovietlaunch of Sputnikin 1957 also convinced manyAmericans that we were falling behind our rivals incore academic subjects.

Change, however, was either slow or non-existentand particularly in the field of history. Manyeducators continued to dismiss the importanceof history as irrelevant to the lives of students.

In 1951, A.H. Lauchner, speaking before aconvention of high school principals, declaredthat We shall some day accept the thought thatit is just as illogical to assume every boy must beable to read as it is that each one must be able toperform on a violin25Learning how to read,let alone learning history, Lauchner insisted, issimply unnecessary for many children. In 1967one social studies educator, Edgar Wesley, wrotean article titled Lets Abolish History. In it, heemphatically declared that no teacher at any grade

level should teach a course in history as content.o do so is confusing, unnecessary, frustrating,futile, pointless, and as illogical as to teach a coursein the World Almanac, the dictionary, or theEncyclopedia.26So much for the heroic tales ofolden times! After World War II, day in and dayout, most students did not take much history andcertainly did not benefit from a clearly defined,grade-by-grade history curriculum; instead, they

took social studies classes that focused on currentevents, social living classes, or classes on problemssuch as drug use. History, when taught, was basedon student interest and hands-on activities.

By the 1960s and 1970s, proponents of history

education could rightly feel dispirited. womain forces were aligned against any substantivechange. First, most schools of education hadbecome centers of progressivism. Year after

year, education schools graduated teachers withlittle content knowledge but plenty of childcentered teaching methods. In tandem withstate and local governments, as well as schooladministrators, there emerged what Bestor referredto as an interlocking directorate of professionaleducationists.27Second, alongside the continued

anti-academic focus of progressives, there emergednew political and educational movements(characterized by terms such as New Left,radical, and multicultural) that spawned out ofthe heated politics of the 1960s and in most casesmelded with the ideas of progressive education.

New Left, radical, or multicultural historians,commentators, and educators urged a dramaticrevision in the way that history was taught atall educational levels. It was time, they said,

to move beyond Western triumphalism andAmerican exceptionalism and focus on peopleand movements that have often been ignored.At its best, this new movement called for moreattention to the history of American Indians,African Americans, Hispanics, and women, topicsthat had previously received little attention inhistory classes. On the other hand, the ideas ofthis new movement tended to verge into simplisticand polemical views of the past. So too did itpromote the idea of the teacher as an activista

person who should seek to change the views ofstudents through historical study. Tus, HowardZinn, author of the popularA Peoples History ofthe United States, declared that it was his goal toawaken a great consciousness of class conflict,racial injustice, sexual inequality, and nationalarrogance.28Students, for Zinn and his followers,

were not autonomousthey could not make up


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their own minds but, instead, had to be led alongthe path of proper historical thinking.

Progressive educators believed that their ideas werein the best interests of students. But facts began totell a different story. All the changes progressive

educators had made did not lead to better results,either on history tests or on SA verbal and mathtests. From 1963 to the late 1970s, SA verbalscores dropped from an average of 478 to the420s. Math scores dropped from an average of502 in 1963 to 466 in 1980. Student knowledgeof history and civics, as NAEP tests would soondemonstrate, was also minimal. Most damaging,the theories of progressive and multiculturaleducators were clearly not working for low-incomestudents who face an enormous education gap in

all major subjects, including history.29

By the early 1980s, when a commission appointedby President Reagan issued a stinging indictmentof American education titled A Nation At Risk,many Americans favored a change. Tey wantededucation reform focused on rigorous academicstandards for all core subjects including history.Te educational foundations of our society, theauthors of A Nation at Risk noted, are beingeroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens

our very future as a Nation and a peopleIf anyunfriendly power had attempted to impose onAmerica the mediocre educational performancethat exists today, we might well have viewed it asan act of war.30

Soon after the release of A Nation At Risk, agroup of noted historians and educators including

William McNeill, C. Vann Woodward, GordonCraig, Diane Ravitch, and Paul Gagnon createdthe Bradley Commission to call for a nation-wide

commitment to the teaching and learning ofhistory. Bradley Commission members noted thatthe nation-wide education crisis that was the focusof A Nation at Risk was in many cases worse forhistory. In the elementary grades, they pointedout, history is typically a forgotten subject. Ithad been replaced by content-light expandinghorizons classes where students spent timelearning about their family and community, not on

the amazing stories of famous Americans or thegreat turning points of American history. In themiddle and high school grades, Bradley memberscontinued, students received a vast sludge of socialstudies classes but little if any U.S. history andalmost no world history. o remedy these problemsthe Bradley Commission called for radical changesat the elementary levelthe replacement of a hazysocial studies curriculum with a curriculum focusedon actual historical content as well as biography,literature, and geography. At the secondary levelthe Commission called for students to study four

years of history, including world history, Westernhistory, and U.S. history. It was time, Commissionmembers argued, to give history its proper placein American schools. History answers not only

the what, the when, the where, and the who aboutthe course of human experience on our planet butmore importantly, the why. Commission membersalso noted that history provides the basis forunderstanding such other disciplines as philosophy,the arts, religion, literature, law, and government.31

Momentum was clearly building for change.In his 1990 State of the Union Address and inhis America 2000 plan, President George H.W.Bush insisted that by the year 2000 Americansstudents must be first in the world in math and

science achievement. Bush also declared thatevery school should ensure that all students learnto use their minds well so they may be preparedfor responsible citizenship, further learning, andproductive employment in our modern economy.It is, Bush insisted, time to act. Education, hedeclared, is the one investment that means morefor our future because it means the most for ourchildren. Real improvement in our schools is notsimply a matter of spending more: Its a matter ofasking moreexpecting moreof our schools, ourteachers, of our kids, of our parents, and ourselves.Bush also recommended the writing of worldclass standards in all major subjects, includinghistory.32In response to the rising tide of supportfor reform, educators at the national and state levelset to work.

At the national level, the attempt to write historystandards failed. Educators and members of


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Congress condemned the set of national historystandards produced under the leadership of theNational Center for History in Schools at theUniversity of California in Los Angeles under thedirection of Gary Nash as being one-sided andoverly negative in its portrayal of American history.At the state level, however, the 1990s and 2000s

witnessed much positive change. State after statebegan writing history standards and developinghistory assessments. Tough many state standards

were of poor quality (either because they lackedrigor, were not specific, or were politically biased),several states did develop strong, rigorous historystandards. Te state history standards producedby South Carolina, Alabama, California, Indiana,Massachusetts, and New York offered well-

developed U.S. and world history standardsthat were academically sound, cohesive, andchallenging.

o provide just one example, consider Californiasgrade 11 standards on the Civil Rights movement.

Te standards require students to read anddiscuss the Supreme Courts Brown v. Board of

Education decision; understand Martin LutherKing Jr.s philosophical and religious dedicationto nonviolence by reading documents such as hisLetter from Birmingham Jail; and be familiar

with many of the famous leaders and activistsof the Civil Rights Movement as well as keyturning points of the movement including King,Rosa Parks, the sit-ins, the attempt to integrateLittle Rock, Arkansass Central High School, theMarch on Washington in 1963, and the Selmato Montgomery marches in 1965. Te Californiastandards also call for readings of books related tothe era, including he Autobiography of Malcolm Xand Richard WrightsNative Son.33

But just as it appeared possible for genuinereform in the teaching and learning of historyto take place, political and institutional supportfor serious academic reforms changed. Te shiftcame from something old and something new.Progressive educators at schools of education hadcontinued to fight against serious academic historystandards in favor of amorphous social studies andthinking skills. Teodore Sizer, former dean of the

Harvard Graduate School of Education, insistedthat the myriad, detailed and mandatory statecurriculum frameworks, no matter how scholarlythey were, are attacks on intellectual freedom.34Popular education writer Jonathan Kozol insistedthat assessments based on the state standardssmacked of memories of another social order notso long ago that regimented all its childrentomarch with pedagogic uniformity, efficiency, andevery competence one can conceiveexcept forindependent willright into Poland, Austria, andFrance, and World War II.35

Alongside the progressive educators came radicaland multicultural historians who insisted thatstate standards needed to be more reflective ofrecent scholarship on race, class, and gender. In his

popular 1995 book Lies My eacher old Me, JamesLoewen insisted that one of the reasons AfricanAmericans and Hispanic students do so poorlyis because they never hear their history. Blackstudents, Loewen argued, consider Americanhistory as usually taught white and assimilative, sothey resist learning it. Tis explains why researchshows a bigger differential between poor and richstudents and white students, in history than inother school subjects. Te same, Loewen argued,is true for girls because women and womens

concerns and perceptions still go underrepresentedin history classes.36Loewens claims managedto be both wrong (by the time he wrote his bookscholarship and teaching had been transformed bythe views of New Left, radical, and multiculturalhistorians for three decades) and insulting at thesame time (as if people can comprehend only thehistory of their own race or gender and only whenit is written by those of their own race or gender).

Added to these forces was something new

national legislation that took the wind out ofthe sails of history educators. Te No Child LeftBehind Act (NCLB), passed by Congress in 2001,required that all schools receiving public fundinghad to test students in mathematics and reading.37History had been omitted. States and districtstook notice. Support for history, as is attested bythe studies discussed in the introduction to thissection, waned.


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A second major blow came with the arrival andadoption by many states of the Common Corestandards, also for only mathematics and Englishlanguage arts. As NCLB did, the CommonCore is pushing states and districts to focusoverwhelmingly on adjusting and revising theircurriculum and professional development programsaround the Common Cores two areas of focus. Its

website proudly declares that the [mathematicsand English language arts] standards were createdto ensure that all students graduate from highschool with the skills and knowledge necessaryto succeed in college, career, and life, regardless of

where they live. If the father of our Constitution,James Madison, or the father of public education,Horace Mann, were alive today they would surely

ask whatever happened to the importance ofeducating students to become self-governingcitizens in a democratic society.38

In 2000, it appeared that the stars were alignedand genuine reform could take place. oday, in2014, it is quite clear that devoted teachers andeducators will need, once again, to rally supportfor genuine change. Te trends of the last several

years have led our nations schools into a positionwhere the importance of historical knowledgethe knowledge necessary for citizenship in this

countryis simply not valued. Madisons fears arebecoming reality.

C. C A P U.S.H C

Te culmination of many of the trends that haveshaped history education over the last severaldecades can be found in the new College Boardcurriculum for Advanced Placement U.S. History(APUSH). Te new curriculum is in a 134-pagedocument (with a 50-page content outline).

Without much open discussion, it replaces theexisting curriculum that had been guided bya 5-page topic outline following the sequencecontained in many state standards.

Te new APUSH curriculum begins with a set ofhistorical thinking skills and a set of themes thatare heavily focused on the trendy issue of identity.

Te first theme, for example, asks students to

explain how various identities, cultures, andvalues have been preserved or changed in differentcontexts of U.S. history with special attentiongiven to the formation of gender, class, racial, andethnic identities.39

On the other hand, there is no theme dedicated tothe concepts of federalism, separation of powers(both of which receive brief mention in thecurriculum), and individual rights in the APUSHcurriculum. Indeed, while the Board is so intenton promoting what it considers good teachingthrough the reading and study of primary sourcedocuments, it fails to even mention the one set ofdocuments essential for understanding Americangovernment and American politics: the FederalistPapers.

Te core of the Boards new curriculum is alengthy content outline that covers Americanhistory from 1491 to the present. It is aremarkable outline, for what it includes and for

what it excludes. Marching in step with so muchtrendy academic scholarship, the new APUSHcurriculum minimizes attention to importantpolitical leaders (in the name of what radical andmulticultural historians derisively refer to as topdown or white male history) and replaces them

with history from the bottom upa history ofprocesses and social movements, and explorationsof identity. When teaching about the AmericanRevolution, teachers are not asked to teach aboutBenjamin Franklin, Patrick Henry, Paul Revere, orSam Adams. Alexander Hamilton is mentioned asa suggestion, not a requirement. Neither Tomas

Jefferson nor James Madison (a primary authorof the Federalist Papers) is mentioned.40Neitherare such titans of antebellum American politics asAndrew Jackson, Daniel Webster, and Henry Clay

mentioned. Important 20th-century presidentssuch as eddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and

JFK are also absent. Harry ruman will not bearound to give anyone hell as he, too, is missing.

Te College Board under its new president, DavidColeman (the chief architect of Common CoresEnglish language arts and literacy standards)appears to want a high school history curriculum


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that mirrors the ideological proclivities of muchthat passes for academic scholarship today.Although the College Board has nothing to sayabout Indian methods of warfare and captivity,including the use of ritualistic torture, it isrelentless in castigating Europeans, particularlythe English, as racist. Te English, the curriculumnotes, developed a rigid racial hierarchy. Italso notes the strong belief in British racial andcultural superiority and the racial stereotypingand the development of strict racial categoriesamong British colonists41Whatever else theBritish settlers brought to this country (such astheir rights as Englishmen) is missing.

Similarly, the College Board paints a darkpicture of the Industrial Revolution. Labor and

management, the College Board writes, battledfor control over wages and working conditions,

with workers organizing local and national unionsand/or directly confronting corporate power.42

Tat most workers never joined unions and thatmost workers (and the millions of immigrants

who came to America) embraced the IndustrialRevolution and the increased standard of livingit entailed (through higher wages, electricalpower, refrigeration, and indoor plumbing) is atruth that does not appear in the new APUSH

curriculum. Te Boards treatment of variouspolitical movements in the 1960s and 1970s isequally distorted. Movements led by Latinos andAmerican Indians are said to be motivated by aconcern for social and economic equality and aredress of past injustices. Conservatives, on theother hand, are motivated by fear. As the Board

writes: Conservatives, fearing juvenile delinquency,urban unrest, and challenges to the traditionalfamily, increasingly promoted their own valuesand ideology.43

Lastly, the Board does not refer to the 9/11terrorist attacks as terrorist at allit simplydeclares: Following the attacks of September 11,2001 Te Board also does not mention eitherAl Qaeda or Osama bin Laden and proceeds,instead, to have teachers focus on the lengthy,controversial conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraqand the questions Americans raised about the

protection of civil liberties and human rights. Tewars in Iraq and Afghanistan were controversial,and the concerns Americans have raised aboutcivil liberties are worthy of discussion. But, absentan understanding of the ideas of Al Qaeda andOsama bin Laden and their unbending hatredof the United States as well as of Israel, and theirdesire (and demonstrated ability) to kill as manyinnocent people as possible, it will not be possiblefor students to understand or discuss in anymeaningful way Americas response to terrorism.44

Te omission of Al Qaeda and Osama bin Ladenis all the more curious when one considers thatthe College Board places a strong emphasis on

what it calls contextualization or the ability toconnect historical events and processes to specific

circumstances of time and place and to broaderregional, national, or global processes.45Clarity andbalance, as well as breadth and depth of topics, aresorely lacking in the new APUSH curriculum.

o paraphrase a Sergio Leone movie, the newAPUSH curriculum represents the bad and theugly but not the good of American history. Teresult is a portrait of America as a dystopiansocietyone riddled with racism, violence,hypocrisy, greed, imperialism, and injustice. Storiesof national triumph, great feats of learning, and

the legacies of some of Americas great heroesmen and women who overcame many obstaclesto create a better nationare either completelyignored or given brief mention. One searches thenew APUSH framework in vain for mention ofthe Mayflower Compact, Washingtons crossingof the Delaware, the War of 1812, or the writingof the Star Spangled Banner. Te Battle ofGettysburg is mentioned (as a suggestion!), butLincolns Gettysburg Addressis not.46TomasEdison has disappeared from our history, as haveEmma Lazarus (and her great, symbolic poemTe New Colossus) and Eleanor Roosevelt. It isnot clear why all of them are gone.

Most mysterious of all is the total absence ofMartin Luther King, Jr. and Kings great I Havea Dream Speech. Te new APUSH mentionsneither, not even as suggested topics! Te CollegeBoards defense is to say that it wants to give


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teachers greater choiceto relieve (as is stated inthe introduction to the new curriculum) teachersfrom the pressure to cover an unlimited amountof content in their A.P. U.S. history course.47Sucha defense is inconsistent with the many terms theBoard does list and it also makes little academicsense. How, for example, can a student understandthe civil rights movement something the Boarddoes declare as a goalwithout understandingKings philosophy of non-violence and civildisobedience?

History is a series of amazing stories of tragedyand triumph, of sadness and hope, of corruptionand virtue. From history, students learn ofthe entirety of human experience. Tey learnhow civilizations are formed. Tey learn how

civilizations fall apart. Tey learn about the greatideas and religions that have influenced millionsof people. Tey learn how wars start and theirconsequences; they learn what leadership is andis not; they learn how people come together tofight for causes; they learn how governments areformed and how they are changed. So too do theylearn amazing tales of heroismtrue stories thatinspired previous generations and can still inspireour nations youth today. Most important, it is fromour history that students learn what it is to be a

citizen in a democracy.

As the introduction to this paper noted, whenMadison prepared to discuss and to write theConstitution and the Federalist Papersarguablythe most important work done by any Americanhe did so by studying history. In the next section,

we will more closely examine how the CommonCore negatively impacts the teaching and learningof history.

. H C C T S U.S. H

It sounds excessively dramatic to say that CommonCores English language arts (ELA) standardsthreaten the study of history. In this section weshow why, in the words of a high school teacher, ifimplemented as their authors intend, the commoncore will damage history education.48But we first

clarify how the study of history in K-12 ever gottangled up in Common Cores ELA standards.

A. H C C C IS H

Te sad story begins with the reason for thecontents of a document titled Common CoreStandards for English Language Arts and Literacyin History/Social Studies, Science, and echnicalSubjects.49Te bulk of the document is on ELAstandards. But the last seven pages (pp. 59-66),titled Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science,and echnical Subjects, provide literacy standardsfor these subjects in grades 6-12. Te introductionto the whole document explains why thesestandards are in this document.

Te standards establish guidelines for Englishlanguage arts (ELA) as well as for literacy inhistory/social studies, science, and technicalsubjects. Because students must learn to read,

write, speak, listen, and use language effectivelyin a variety of content areas, the standardspromote the literacy skills and conceptsrequired for college and career readiness inmultiple disciplines.

Te College and Career Readiness AnchorStandards form the backbone of the ELA/literacy standards by articulating coreknowledge and skills, while grade-specific

standards provide additional specificity.Beginning in grade 6, the literacy standardsallow teachers of ELA, history/social studies,science, and technical subjects to use theircontent area expertise to help students meetthe particular challenges of reading, writing,speaking, listening, and language in theirrespective fields.

It is important to note that the grade 612literacy standards in history/social studies,science, and technical subjects are meant tosupplement content standards in those areas,not replace them. States determine how to

incorporate these standards into their existingstandards for those subjects or adopt them ascontent area literacy standards.

As indicated, Common Cores literacy standardsare justified on the grounds that college readinessmeans being able to read, write, and speak in allsubject areasa reasonable expectation if theall doesnt mean every subject taught in collegeor a level of proficiency beyond the level of the


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information presented in diverse formats and media(e.g., visually, quantitatively, as well as in words) inorder to address a question or solve a problem.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.8Evaluate an authors premises, claims, and evidenceby corroborating or challenging them with other

information.CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.9Integrate information from diverse sources,both primary and secondary, into a coherentunderstanding of an idea or event, notingdiscrepancies among sources

What is telling in the introduction to the wholedocument is the expectation that subject teachersare to use the content of their subject to teachstudents how to read, write, and talk in theirsubjects, not the other way around. eachers

are not to draw on students reading, writing,and speaking skills (i.e., their intellectual orthinking processes) to learn the content of theirdisciplines. Secondary school learning has beenturned on its head without any public murmurin 2010, so far as we know, from history, science,or mathematics teachers or their professionalorganizations, probably because most subjectteachers did not know they were being required toteach reading and writing in a document ostensiblydesignated for English and reading teachers.

(Te National Council for the Social Studiesapparently knew what the ELA standards writersintended, according to this article,52but did notcommunicate any concerns to its members, so faras we know.)

Tis stealth requirement should have sparkedbroad public discussion when the final versionof the Common Core standards was released (in

June 2010) and before state boards of educationvoted to adopt them. But, so far as we know, there

is no record of any attempt by a state board orcommissioner of education to hear from a broadrange and large number of secondary teachers inall subjects (including English and mathematicsteachers).

D. W E E RAWAC F

A major attempt to get subject teachers to teachreading and writing skills called Writing across

the Curriculum (WAC) or Reading and Writingacross the Curriculum (RAWAC) took place inthe 1960s and 1970s at the college level and inK-12, and it had gradually fizzled out with littleto show for it. Tere was no explanation in theCommon Core document of how Common Coreseffort was different, if in fact it was. Perhaps thestandards writers simply didnt know about thesefailed movements and why they failed. As notedabove, NCEs 2011 policy research brief did notreference even one study after boldly declaring thatthe research is clear: discipline-based instructionin reading and writing enhances studentachievement in all subjects.53RAWAC failed formany reasons, and we suggest some of the mostobvious ones first.

No systematic information available: On the surface,the effort to make secondary subject teachersresponsible for assigning more reading to theirstudents and/or teaching them how to read

whatever they assigned sounded desirable andeminently justifiable. But there was no systematicinformation on what the average student read,how much they read, or why they were not doingmuch reading if that were the case. Why assignmore reading and/or try to teach students how toread it if there were reasons for not assigning much

reading to begin with (e.g., no textbooks available,students couldnt read whatever textbooks wereavailable on the topic, students wouldnt do muchhomework)?

Misunderstanding of what history teachers do:Part of the demise of RAWAC in K-12 may beattributed to a misunderstanding by its advocatesof what history teachers actually do in a classroom

when teaching history. Tey might ask theirstudents, for example, to describe and document

Lincolns evolving political position on how bestto preserve the Union from the beginning to theend of the Civil Warafter giving them a rangeof documents to read or look at. Such a directiverequires application of CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.7(integrate and evaluate multiplesources of information presented in diverse formatsand media in order to address a question or solvea problem) to a history lesson, which is how the


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general skill gets developed. But, in doing so,history teachers are not trying to teach a literacyskill; they are aiming to expand students consciousknowledge base.

ake another possible examplea lesson on

totalitarianism. History teachers might assignand discuss a reading on a totalitarian state inthe 20thcenturyhow it controls resources andpeoples behavior. Tey might then ask directly:According to this reading, what is a totalitarianstate like? What does it try to do? What were the

weaknesses of the Soviet Union as an example ofa totalitarian state? History teachers are unlikelyto talk about (or think in terms of ) main idea orsupporting details in discussing what studentshave read about a totalitarian state, but they are

clearly talking about a main idea and supportingdetails when they raise specific questions fordiscussion about a specific topic. Tey are askingstudents to apply these general skills in topic-related language for the classroom lesson andthereby develop the skills.

History teachers (like science teachers) use thespecific content of their discipline in ways thatrequire students to apply their intellectual processesand their prior knowledge to what they have been

assigned to read or do. If students cannot answerthe questions on the grounds that they couldntread the assignment, other issues need to beexplored.

Less and less reading outside of school: Te demiseof RAWAC in K-12 can also be traced to thediminishing amount of reading and writing doneoutside of school hours. How much reading havestudents been doing on the topic under discussion?In other words, do they have any prior knowledge?

Are they familiar with the vocabulary relatedto the topic? Te two are related. Students canabsorb some of the discipline-related vocabularyof a discipline-based topic by reading and re-reading the material carefully (as in history) or by

working carefully with material named by thesewords (as in a science lab) without constantlyconsulting a glossary. But how to get studentsto do more reading (or re-reading) is not the

purpose of a standard. Getting students to addressquestions about particular topics in a discipline

with adequate and sufficient information (i.e.,to develop their conscious understanding of thetopics) is one purpose of a standard.

Reading and writing as homework is the studentsresponsibility, not the teachers. Tis responsibilityis not shaped by the words in an academicstandard. It is dependent on a students self-discipline and motivation, elements of the studentscharacter beyond the teachers control. eacherscan set up incentives and disincentives, but thesemust be reinforced by policies set by a schoolboard, parents, and school administrators. Tey arenot governed by academic objectives.

History teachers self-image: Needless to say, thedemise of RAWAC in K-12 can in part be tracedto content teachers self-image, an issue highlightedin the research literature. Te need for writing insubject-based classrooms makes sense to mostteachers, but significantly more writing activitiesdidnt take place in the secondary school inresponse to RAWAC efforts in large part becausecontent teachers, with large numbers of studentsto teach on a daily or weekly basis, did not seethemselves as writing teachers. Tey continue to

see English teachers as teachers of writing (andliterature), and themselves as teachers of specificsubjects like math, science, or history. Students

who read little or read mainly easy texts areunlikely to be able to do the kind of expository

writing their subject areas require because theresearch is clear that good writing is dependenton good reading. Tis points to another possiblereason for the demise of RAWAC.

Stress on autobiographical, narrative, or informal

writing:Te emphasis on non-text-based writingin the ELA class began in the 1970s. Advocates ofa writing process tended to stress autobiographicalnarrative writing, not informational or expository

writing. Students were also encouraged to dofree journal writing because it was shapelessand needed no correction. Subject teachers werefighting an overwhelming emphasis on non-reasoned and non-text-based writing in elementary


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classrooms, secondary English classes, and teacherworkshops from the 1970s on and may havedecided that asking for reading-based writing andre-shaping what students submitted was not worththe effort. We simply dont know because there isno direct and systematic research on the issue.

Professional development on different history

content, not discipline-based reading: Tere maybe yet another reason that subject teachersavoided implementing RAWAC. Tere is littlein-depth research on this issue, and for goodreason. We know little about the quality of theprofessional development they received. Te focusof professional development for history teachersat the time RAWAC was being promoted wasoften the content or view of the content that was

being introduced in the name of critical pedagogyor multiculturalism. Te workshops described inTe Stealth Curriculum: Manipulating AmericasHistory eachers54have a decided focus onteaching teachers and their students what to thinkabout U.S. and world history rather than on howto read and write in a history class. Reading and

writing activities were included in these workshops,but the development of literacy skills was nottheir goal.

Providing professional development is a hugeand very profitable industry because most of itis mandated by local, state, or federal authorities.But it has almost no track record of effectivenessin significantly increasing students knowledge ofthe subject. Tis was the conclusion of a massivereview of the research on professional developmentfor mathematics teachers undertaken by theNational Mathematics Advisory Panel (NMAP) in2008.55Tere is no reason to consider the situationdifferent for history teachers. Note that we are

not talking about professional development toteach history teachers how to teach reading and

writing in their own subjects; we are talking aboutworkshops to teach teachers the content of thesubjects they are already licensed to teach so theycan better teach the content to their students.

No information on qualifications of workshop

providers: Professional development to teach

history teachers how to teach students to read andwrite in their disciplines presents an even bleakerpicture. Not one study showing the effectivenessof the practice is cited in the NCE report in2011 or in an IES report in 2008 despite bothreports lauding its benefits. None of the studiesreviewed by the NMAP for its task group reporton professional development looked at theadequacy of the academic qualifications of theprofessional development providers in the reviewedstudies. Yet the qualifications of professionaldevelopment providers was such a serious issue inimplementing the states Education Reform Actof 1993 that the Massachusetts Department ofEducation required the involvement of historiansin the content workshops for history teachers it

funded even though it could not establish criteriafor the organizers of these workshops.

E. H C C D K-H C

Te underlying issue is revealed by the titlesoffered in Appendix B as exemplars of the qualityand complexity of the informational reading thathistory (and English, science, and mathematics)teachers could use to boost the amount of readingtheir students do and to teach disciplinary reading

and writing skills. Te standards writers do notunderstand the high school curriculum.

Inappropriate exemplars for informational reading:While English teachers in grades 9-10 may bepuzzled about the listing for English teachers ofPatrick Henrys Speech to the Second VirginiaConvention, Margaret Chase Smiths Remarksto the Senate in Support of a Declaration ofConscience, and George Washingtons FarewellAddressall non-literary, political speecheshistory teachers in grades 9/10 may be evenmore puzzled by the exemplars for them. Wefind, among a few appropriate exemplars (on thehistory of indigenous and African Americans),E.H. Gombrichs Te Story of Art, 16th Edition,Mark Kurlanskys Cod: A Biography of the FishTat Changed the World, and Wendy TompsonsTe Illustrated Book of Great Composers. Its hard tosee any high school history teacher comfortably


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tackling excerpts from those books in the middleof a grade 9 or 10 world history or U.S. historycourse. Yes, these titles are only exemplars of thequality and complexity desired, but what wouldbe appropriate for the courses history teachers arelikely to teach in grade 9 or 10?

Te informational exemplars in Appendix B forhistory teachers in grades 11/12 are even morebizarre. Along with a suitable text, ocquevillesDemocracy in America, we find Julian BellsMirrorof the World: A New History of Art andFedViews,issued in 2009 by the Federal Reserve Bank ofSan Francisco. Tese two titles clearly dont fitinto a standard grade 11 U.S. history course or astandard grade 12 U.S. government course. Teseexemplars are out of place not just in a typical high

school history class but in a typical high schoolcurriculum.

Te standards writers wanted to make teachersacross the curriculum as responsible for teachingliteracy as the English teacher, which at firstsounds fair, almost noble. But to judge fromthe sample titles they offer for increasing andteaching informational reading in other subjects,informational literacy seems to be somethingteachers are to cultivate and students to acquire

independent of a coherent, sequential, andsubstantive curriculum in the topic of theinformational text.56Strong readers can acquireinformational literacy independent of a coherentand graduated curriculum. But weak readers endup deprived of class time better spent immersed inthe content of their courses.

Inappropriate literacy strategiesa nonhistorical

approach to historical texts: Perhaps the mostbizarre aspect of Common Cores approach to

literary study is the advice given teachers by itschief writer David Coleman, now president of theCollege Board, on the supposed value of cold orclose (non-contextualized) reading of historicaldocuments like the Gettysburg Address. Doingso levels the playing field, according to Coleman.History teachers believe doing so contributes tohistorical illiteracy.

Aside from the fact that close reading was notdeveloped or promoted by Yale English professorsCleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren as areading technique for historical documents, nohistory or English teacher before the advent ofCommon Core would approach the study of aseminal historical document by withholding initialinformation about its historical context, why it

was created at that particular time, by whom, forwhat purposes so far as the historical record tellsus, and clear language archaisms. Nor would theykeep such information from being considered ininterpreting Lincolns speech. Yet, David Colemanhas categorically declared: Tis close readingapproach forces students to rely exclusively on thetext instead of privileging background knowledge,

and levels the playing field for all students.As high school teacher Craig Turtell states:Tis approach also permits the allocation ofhistorical texts to English teachers, most of

whom are untrained in the study of history, andleads to history standards [Common Coresliteracy standards for history] that neglect thedistinctiveness of the discipline.57Turtell goeson to say that the study of history requires theuse of specific concepts and cognitive skills thatcharacterize the disciplineconcepts like evidence

and causation and skills like contextualization,sourcing, and corroboration. Tese concepts andskills are largely distinct from those employed inliterary analysis. Both disciplines engage in closereadings of texts, for example, but with differentpurposes. Te object of the literary critic is the text,or more broadly, the genre; for the historian it is,however limited or defined, a wider narrative ofhuman history, which textual analysis serves.

. T F V

F C CFederalism as an essential principle of Americangovernment stands as the creative organizingconcept that allows the fulfillment of the basicideals of republicanism, liberty, and the publicgood. As Jefferson explained in his first inauguraladdress, federalism meant the support of thestate governments in all their rights, as the most


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competent administrations for our domesticconcerns and the safest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies; [and] the preservation ofthe general government in its whole constitutional

vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at homeand safety abroad. (Jefferson, like Madison, JohnAdams, and other founding political theorists,that is, saw federalism as at least as much a wayof dividing the powers of government to seek thepublic good, as a way of limiting them.) Te firstUnion, established on sentiments and principlesthat had come into existence before Independence,had tried to formalize itself in the Articles ofConfederation, really a mere league of states wheredelegates from the states cast the (one) vote oftheir state in the proceedings of the Continental

(Old) Congress. Te terms confederation andfederation were synonymous in the eighteenthcentury; both meant a form of meeting together

where sovereign states cast votes as governmentunits; the people, at least directly, were notinvolved.

Te word came, though, to have a new,unprecedented meaning: it meant the form ofgovernment proposed in the new Constitution;it was said to define federalism itself, and itsdefenders called themselves federalists. Speaking

for the defenders of the Constitution (federalists),Madison explained that some of its features were(conventionally) federal, such as the election andequality of the states in the Senate, and the explicitdesignation of some powers to the national (now tobe termed federal) government, while others werereserved to the states. On the other hand, somefeatures were national in that they rested directlyon the people, such as the election of members ofthe House of Representatives.

Furthermore, Madison explained, the operationof the government on the people in theirindividual capacities in its ordinary and mostessential proceedings was a function of a nationalgovernment, which he now designated as thefederal government. Tus, he concluded, theproposed Constitutionis in strictness [accordingto the conventional definitions] neither a nationalnor a federal Constitution, but a composite

of both, now itself taken to define the wordfederal.58

Te word thus became part of the larger ideologyof balance or separation of powers seen as essentialto republicanism, liberty, and the public good.

In the conception popularized by Montesquieu,Voltaire, and many English Whig theoristsafter the Glorious Revolution of 1689, balanceand separation of powers meant the supremelegislative and the supreme executivea perpetualcheck and balance to each other.59In America,though, where state sovereignties already existed

within the Union after 1776, the idea of federalismcame to include the republican governments ofthe states as part of the division of powers that

would make the balancing of them even more

effective than was the case in the unitary (but by1765 also corrupt) British nation. Parliament, theDeclaratory Act had asserted powerfully in 1766,had authority to make laws and statutesin allcases whatsoever.

Such an all-powerful legislature, John Adamsthought, would reflect all the vices, follies, andfrailties of human nature, and make arbitrary lawsfor its own interest. He recommended insteada legislature of two houses, a separate executive

with veto power over the laws, an independentjudiciary with fixed salaries and tenure duringgood behavior, and a sharing of power betweenthe national and state governmentsa federalismrequiring separation of powers within thegovernments of both states and nation.

Te extensive size of the new republic requiredas well a division of powers between the centerand the peripheriesa unique, liberty-enhancing,public good-oriented conception of American

government that had become the new definitionof the word federalism itself. Te people, assovereign, could, under the new federal idea,convey to both state and national governmentssuch powers as they deemed proper, as well as

withhold those deemed improper. Tey could alsodecide how the powers of the state and nationalgovernments related to each other, for example,the supreme law clause, the necessary and proper


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provision, the power to regulate commerce,and the first, ninth, and tenth amendments.

Tis was American federalism, a system that,as Madison had explained to Washington asthe Constitutional Convention was about toconvene (see above), would at once support adue supremacy of the national authority, and notexclude the local authorities wherever they can besubordinately useful. Te mixed nature of thenew Constitution was, though, entirely republicanin that all of its powers were deriveddirectly orin directly from thepeople, and thus remainedfaithful to the fundamental principle of the[American] Revolution . . . to rest all our politicalexperiments on the capacity of mankind forself-government.60

Jefferson offered his own understanding offederalism by noting the difference between thecare for the liberties and rights of man duringtwenty-five years of government under theConstitution in the United States, and the assaultson them during the Napoleonic era in Europe

with the generalizing and concentrating all caresand powers into one body[under] the autocratsof Russia or France. Te secret, Jeffersonexplained, will be found to be in the making[of man] himself the depository of the powers

respecting himself by trusting as few powers aspossible to the higher, more oligarchical, branchesof government. Let the national government,he said, be entrusted with the defense of thenation, and its foreign and federal relations; thestate governments with the civil rights, laws, police,and administration of what concerns the stategenerally; the counties withlocal concerns, andeach ward direct the interests within itself.Tis

would form a gradation of authorities, standingeach on the basis of law, holding everyone to itsdelegated share of powers, and constituting truly asystem of fundamental balances and checks for thegovernment.61

Tus, a sharing of the powers of government whileacknowledging the checks and balances among thefederal parts was the way to combine, as Madisonput it in Federalist 37, the requisite stability andenergy in government with the inviolable attention

due to liberty and to the republican form. Bothmen sought throughout to emphasize ways to keepthe sharing and balancing as close to the needs,concerns, and purposes of the people as possible.

Whatever the more technical and legal issuesinvolved in the operation of the federal system,especially the division of power between thestates and the federal government, the over-ridingintention was to have the voices of the people,

whether expressed through federal, state, or localgovernments, their administrative agencies, orquasi-public non-governmental agencies, listenedto and responded to, especially when up against theoligarchs, what we would probably think of todayas the bureaucracy.

In thinking through how any public question being

handled in the vast bureaucracy of the federalsystem could be true to the basic philosophicalpremise of the system, the first concern must befull and earnest attention to the various voices,advocacies, critiques, and proposals coming fromthe public. Whatever their place in or relationto any federal, state, or local laws or

Imperiling the Republic: The Fate of U.S. History Instruction under Common Core

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