Put history back in the classroom

The real solution for strengthening history in public schools wasn’t in Texas at its textbook commission. It’s in front of Congress with President Obama’s overhaul of No Child Left Behind. The administration wants all states to develop a common educational standard, but the primary focus is still language arts, math and science with no mention of history or social studies.

While Texas provided insight into a national problem, it was little more than a sideshow in a battle that’s been waged for years. History has never been more popular than it is today with cable television and the Internet, but is still the most mistreated subject in school curriculums.

History and social studies were already in a downward spiral before NCLB.

The Texas commission only illustrates how this nation’s great story has devolved into shouting matches as both sides of the political aisle fight to demonize and lionize their respective viewpoints. The Founding Fathers, the great men and women, veterans and social movements that made America exceptional are now a matter of perspective.

No Child Left Behind was devoid of real history standards when it was passed in 2001. National historical organizations have lobbied since its passage to get them raised or installed in the act and are now waiting to see if the administration’s overhaul presented to Congress includes any improvements.

NCLB legislation caused a division among historians when it sat on the drawing boards in the nation’s capitol. There was the argument that history knowledge couldn’t be properly measured in standardized multiple choice tests like language arts and mathematics.

Most educators were initially shocked that it wasn’t initially given equal status with those core subjects. It was feared the exclusion of U.S. history and social studies from the national standard would lead to the subjects’ extinction as a core academic requirement of American education in many states.

They were correct. U.S. history has started disappearing in classrooms as schools “teach to the test.” Some states have eliminated history requirements outright, and others have tried to “fold the subjects” into reading class curriculums.

Instead of proportional funding, resources and training being funneled into U.S. history and social studies, they have been diverted away from the subjects and into those subjects measured by NCLB standardized tests. This has left U.S. history teachers without real support and fighting for relevance in the American education system. President Obama’s overhaul of NCLB includes the new goal of making students “college ready,” but it doesn’t make them “citizen capable” if it continues ignoring these subjects.

The public reaction to good history teachers fighting this in the trenches has been less than exemplary. One history teacher made headlines when he was suspended from his job for bringing a replica Civil War rifle to his class as a teaching tool because some parents thought he should be held to the same zero-tolerance policy as the students. Another had her job threatened because she showed a benign excerpted segment from Mel Gibson’s R-rated film “The Patriot.” And a living historian — volunteering his time to lecture on American Indian life — was banned from a classroom because he had a Cherokee blow-gun in his lesson kit.

When a child enters a classroom, the teacher should have all learning tools of that academic subject available, and a history class is no different. But those classrooms have largely become sterile dwellings in most public schools. Prints of seminal moments or famous people in American history don’t adorn the walls, neither do copies of the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence, and archaeological items that show history to be a living, breathing subject are noticeably absent.

Reading, science and math are important, but NCLB standards must include history and social studies. If it isn’t improved, knowledgeable citizens who can pull a voting lever and know what they’re doing are going to become extinct.