This article appears in
the April 2001 issue of Our Gifted Children.
A GOOD HISTORY CLASSROOM
THE DIMINUTION OF HISTORY
FOR GIFTED STUDENTS
BY JEFFREY T.
STROEBEL
The study of history seems
to be the ugly stepchild of gifted education, far more likely to be ignored
than language arts, mathematics, or science.
Gifted programs at the elementary or middle school level that provide
subject-area specific instruction to students are far more likely to do so in
these subjects rather than in history.
The status of history instruction for gifted students in high school is
not quite so dismal, as many schools at least offer advanced placement courses
in United States and European history; however, by this time, many gifted
students are preconditioned to think of history as boring, tedious, and most
damaging of all, irrelevant to their lives.
The diminution of history
for gifted students is tragic. As much
as any other subject, history offers the opportunity to exercise the
higher-level thinking skills that form a key element of education for the
gifted. What better canvas
for developing the ability to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate
information than the narrative study of human experience? The advanced study of history virtually
requires these skills, as well as the ability to read for information and
express oneself clearly both orally and through writing. In addition, the understanding of history
requires that a student acquire a large knowledge base and be able to access
and apply that knowledge to new information.
Traditionally, these are the very skills that have defined an
academically gifted individual.
Certainly the relegation
of the study of history to a “second string” area of academic study is not
unique to gifted education. Diane Ravitch, in her excellent survey of twentieth century
education—Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms, reports that
prior to the 1920s most American high schools offered a four-year sequence in
history that included ancient history, European history, English history, and
American history. As part of the general
effort of educational progressives to “reform” the American educational system,
history began to be de-emphasized and even dropped from the curriculum in favor
of a more ambiguous subject called “social studies.” This change fit in well with the philosophy
of the progressive educators, most of whom were college education professors
who had little respect for rigorous academic training. They denigrated the process of acquiring
knowledge, rejecting academic rigor in favor of teaching “life skills.” The study of history was deemed to be far
less important than students acquiring the social skills necessary to work
cooperatively in a modern industrial society.
Few students were going to be historians, so why did we need to expose
every student to an exhaustive study of past events? Thus, the subject of history (along with
geography) lost its co-equal status with the other serious subjects and became
diluted into an amalgamation of political science, geography, current events,
service-learning, personal development, values clarification, sociology, pop
psychology, and other elements that we now call social studies.
Although history still
plays a predominate role in many social studies curriculums, the term social
studies implies that anyone can teach it well without extensive historical
training or background. In many states,
teachers are teaching history with little or no training beyond a general
college survey course. History education
is often tedious and boring simply because the teacher knows nothing more than
the textbook, and is thus reduced to assigning worksheets, questions that can be
answered verbatim from the text, and creative projects
that are little more than a test of a student’s artistic ability. Seldom is a teacher hired just to teach
history. Social studies departments are
often viewed as the place to fill a disproportionate number of coaching
positions. Having spent over half of my
teaching career as an athletic coach, my purpose is not to denigrate the
teaching ability of coaches, but to simply state the obvious. Especially at the high school level, the
ability and eagerness to coach is often more important in hiring than the
ability to teach effectively. Given the
need to hire a new varsity basketball coach, if a principal has openings for a
physics teacher, an upper-level mathematics teacher, and a history teacher, what
are the odds that the coaching position will be filled with a history
teacher? History teachers must be
willing and able to do other things far more than teachers of “more important”
subjects.
Why is history
relevant? A major function of education
is to enable us to understand and appreciate our world. Without such knowledge, much of literature
and the arts is either incomprehensible or at the very least fragmented. Critics of an academically rigorous education
often claim that “traditional” educators only attempt to cram students’ minds
with information, precluding the ability of students to think for
themselves. What a false choice such a
doctrine perpetuates! As
the late Albert Shanker said: “The problem with many youngsters
today is not that they don’t have opinions but that they don’t have facts on
which to base their opinions.”
The study of history supplies such essential information. History provides us a firm foundation from
which we can evaluate the present. Imagine
the enormous difficulty in understanding the events of today without some
knowledge of the past. From issues as
diverse as the electoral college, racism, and the
conflict in the
It is somewhat ironically
appropriate that I sit writing this essay on the Martin Luther King Day
holiday. Dr. King understood the
importance of history. His knowledge of
Gandhi and Thoreau affected his actions throughout the course of his leadership
of the civil rights movement. Only those
ignorant of the history of Dr. King’s life can claim that we have made no
progress in racial relations or, conversely, are anywhere close to realizing
his dream of a country where individuals are judged by the content of their
character, and not merely by the color of their skin. Other leaders of the civil rights movement
also realized the importance of the intellectual foundation that the study of
history provides. As
Malcolm X wrote: “Of all of our studies, history is best qualified to reward
our research.”
What can we do to insist that our gifted children receive the essential cultural and intellectual roots that only the study of history can provide? First, we must insist that history form the basis of any social studies curriculum. Political science, geography, anthropology, and other disciplines are not unimportant, but history must form the hub from which all other social sciences emanate. We must also insist that gifted children are not denied the opportunity to study history at a level commensurate with their learning potential. How ridiculous it is that a student who is offered an appropriate mathematics curriculum, which may be several years beyond that usually assigned to his/her chronological age, not be offered the same opportunities in history. We must also insist that history is taught in a manner that befits the excitement and drama of the human experience. History is first and foremost a story. Just as good parents read to their young children, children have an innate attraction to any well-told story. We must nurture this inclination in the classroom. A good history classroom is one that is full of discussion and ideas, not one that is predominately silent as students skim to find the answers to the questions at the back of the chapter. History provides us an almost unparalleled venue in which to develop the ability of students to think clearly and express themselves logically. These skills cannot be taught in a vacuum. Knowledge of our past provides the vital resources with which we can develop mature intellects. As long as history education remains “second class,” we will always struggle to produce first class minds.
Jeffrey Stroebel teaches seventh and
eighth grade history at the