Don't Know Much About History?

Here we go again. We now have another in the decades-long parade of studies that show just how stupid American students are, this time in the area of history. In an article in The Washington Post, it’s reported that most fourth-graders can’t identify a picture of Abraham Lincoln or name two reasons why he’s important, that most eighth-graders can’t explain what advantage the colonial rebels had over the British army in the Revolutionary War, and that most twelfth-graders don’t know why the U.S. entered World War I. Never mind that I don’t know for sure why the U.S. entered World War I or what advantage we had over the Brits in our Revolution (I would ace the Lincoln question, though), this gross ignorance is what lead the Post article as well as most of the TV news coverage. But if you read further in the Post article (though you can’t in the TV reporting because it doesn’t go any further), you’ll find that the findings just aren’t as dire as we’re led to believe. Indeed, the title of the Post article is “Federal report shows history scores rising slowly.” Yes, despite the dire statistics that lead the story (and make up the whole of the cute TV story – “Oh, look how dumb our kids are!”), it turns out that there has actually been some, albeit modest, improvement in students’ knowledge of history. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (“the nation’s report card”), while the percentage of students who do not reach a basic achievement level is still larger than those who are proficient or advanced, the average scores for history knowledge has risen since 1994. Fourth-graders’ scores have risen from 205 to 214 (on a 500-point scale), eighth-graders’ scores from 259 to 266, and twelfth-graders scores from 286 to 288: “Overall, 73 percent of fourth-graders scored basic or better in 2010, showing at least partial mastery of knowledge and skills, up from 64 percent in 1994. For eighth-graders, the rate was 69 percent, up from 61 percent. For 12th-graders, 45 percent showed at least basic knowledge, up from 43 percent.” And during that time, African American and Hispanic student scores have narrowed the achievement gap with white students.

Yes, this isn’t the goal we no doubt all would like to see. But it’s interesting that the news media report the story of slow improvement as utter failure. It’s so much easier – and entertaining – to belittle our children and their teachers than it is to actually analyze the data, discuss progress and objectives, and encourage – and support – means for improvement. There’s a small attempt at analysis in the Post article, but it ends up being a dead-end of contradiction: On one hand, students have been short-changed in knowledge of history because No Child Left Behind privileges reading and math, but on the other, students are showing the improvement they are in history because their reading skills are improving. So which is it? Could it be more complicated? We’ll never know as long as the news media continue to focus in their jocular incredulity on what our students – and I suspect many of us adults – don’t know.