from the September 08, 2005 edition –
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Everyone is telling teachers what to teach

Even in an era of standardized tests, state governments and others are
adding mandatory subjects to schools.

By Stacy A. Teicher | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

>From urban Philadelphia to rural Illinois, the new school year also
means new requirements for what, precisely, students must learn. In
addition to their normal English classes, science labs, and test-prep
work, more will be studying topics such as African history, personal
finance, and genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda.

Curriculum mandates sometimes come top-down from state
legislatures. Others spring from grass-roots demands on school
boards. They’re the product of a wrestling match of sorts – between
American education’s tradition of local control and the growing
movement to standardize subject matter for the sake of global
competitiveness.

When the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)
periodically shows US students performing dismally on a certain
subject, “usually there’s a hue and outcry,” says Peggy Altoff,
president-elect of the National Council for the Social Studies
(NCSS). That can spur state lawmakers to try to expand the curriculum
in, say, history or geography. But in addition, “states [or local
districts] begin to pick up the mantle for certain issues … when a
certain segment of the population begins to say, ‘There’s a neglect
here,’ ” she says.

Take the City of Brotherly Love: It’s the first public school district
to require all high school students entering this September to take a
year-long course on African and African-American history before they
graduate.

Unanimously approved by Philadelphia’s five-member School Reform
Commission, the mandate was in some ways 40 years in the making. In
the 1960s, local activists won the fight for more Afrocentric
curriculum development, but the courses have been offered as electives
in just a portion of the city’s schools. Now a college-level textbook
has been adapted and instructors in all 60 high schools have been
trained to teach the required course.

The textbook starts with the history of African civilizations and then
moves to the Americas. “It puts in context that the slave trade was a
period in our history – we did not enter humankind as slaves,” says
Sandra Dungee Glenn, a member of the reform commission. She recalls
attending high school in the district in the 1970s, when she says she
rarely saw her heritage reflected in her textbooks.

Not a total solution, but it’s a start

About 65 percent of the district’s students are African-American, but
proponents of the course say it’s equally important for others,
because of the reverberations US racial history has to this day. The
move wasn’t universally applauded, however. John Perzel (R), the
Speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, sent a letter to
the commission this summer expressing concerns raised in his district,
which is largely white and includes immigrants from Russia, Turkey,
and other countries.

“While I believe it is appropriate to acknowledge … cultural
diversity within the district’s curriculum, mandating an entire year
of study focusing on a single constituency appears unnecessary,” the
letter reads in part. “A more prudent course might be to develop a
multipronged course of study focusing on the many cultures embodied
within the school district.”

Ms. Glenn says the bulk of response has been positive and the decision
is firm. “I don’t believe that it’s a silver bullet, but it is an
important component [of reforming the city’s schools],” she says.

Teachers’ responses usually depend on how much they’re consulted on
new requirements. But even if they agree the subject matter is
important, covering a long list of specific topics as well as
attending to individual students is becoming much more difficult.

It’s even more difficult as they face simultaneous demands to focus
more on core skills such as reading and math, which have to be tested
under the federal No Child Left Behind law.

“The teacher is caught [in] this whirling cycle,” says Bruce Damasio,
a history and economics teacher in Maryland and an NCSS board
member. “You’re supposed to meet this standard, and at the same time
this topic du jour has come up … and you’ve got 180 days to get all
these things done.”

Illinois takes on genocide

For political leaders, curriculum is one way to signal values. In
August, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) signed a law expanding the
state’s 15-year-old mandate on Holocaust education. Now all students
will learn not just about Nazi atrocities but also about genocide in
places such as Armenia, Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Sudan.

“We have to be sure [students] understand that racial, national,
ethnic, and religious hatred can lead to horrible tragedies,” Governor
Blagojevich said in a press statement. “These are not just the
problems of our parents’ or grandparents’ generations. We … [need
to] encourage students to fight intolerance and hatred wherever they
see it.” Local districts will determine the details of how the subject
will be taught at various grade levels.

Some efforts, on the other hand, never see the light of day. In
Maryland in the late 1990s, lawmakers wanted to mandate more teaching
about the Irish Potato Famine of the mid-1800s. Because the state has
a tradition of leaving curriculum matters primarily to local
districts, Ms. Altoff appeared before the legislature to warn against
setting a precedent with something so specific. In the end, schools
were given the option of using a suggested curriculum.

Creating commissions is one way states can influence curriculum
without going so far as to issue an edict. In New York this summer,
the announcement of an Amistad Commission to determine if there needs
to be more content on slavery and African-Americans’ contributions set
off a controversy; it’s unclear how many educators will be among the
group’s 19 political appointees. (The Amistad, for which the committee
was named, was a slave ship. Setting out from Havana in 1839, the
ship’s cargo of 53 enslaved Africans took over the ship and sailed to
Long Island, New York, where the mutineers were put on trial and
eventually set free.)

New Jersey also has an Amistad Commission, one of many groups in the
state charged with promoting better understanding of a variety of
issues and ethnic groups. The state’s Holocaust Commission is paired
with a requirement that the subject be taught in public schools.

But others, like the Italian Commission, created in 2002, prepare
curriculum that is strictly voluntary.

Persuading school districts and teachers to opt in requires some
innovative lesson plans and training, so they can see how the
materials meet state standards, says Roger Marinzoli, executive
director of the New Jersey Italian Commission.

Italian-Americans make up about 25 percent of the state, he says, but
“the attempt is not to make this a flag-waving exercise…. You have
to make it appealing to a broad spectrum.”

The group’s lessons cover the US internment of Germans, Japanese, and
Italians during World War II and address ethnic stereotyping. It also
offers a language-arts segment linking Da Vinci’s
stream-of-consciousness writings to existing lessons on novelist James
Joyce.

Feedback has been so good, Mr. Marinzoli says, that schools as far
away as Sicily have asked to use some of the curriculum.

Textbooks can be quickly adapted

Because textbooks are often updated every few years and customized for
states, the steady drumbeat of new material isn’t usually a problem,
says Chris Johnson, editorial director for social studies texts at
McDougal Littell.

Texas, for instance, requires that texts at every grade level include
information of the benefits of the free enterprise system. And
California has asked for more material on Martin Luther King Jr. and
labor organizer César Chávez to meet its social studies
requirement. Shrinking photos often makes enough space so that the
books don’t get longer or lose other content, Mr. Johnson says.

But for teachers, there’s a concern about trade-offs. A key question,
Altoff says, is “what provisions are being made to ensure that the
coverage of that content is more than surface – that it’s actually
going to be meaningful within the time frame [they have to teach]?”

“There is no simple answer,” she adds. “That’s why there’s so much
pressure from different curriculum groups.”

Additional ‘must’ topics vary from state to state

State lawmakers sometimes get specific about the topics that public
schools must teach. Some examples from recent years:

Human rights

* Sixteen states, ranging from Alabama to Nevada, have legislation on
Holocaust education. Eight states require or encourage Holocaust
instruction, while others simply establish commissions or task
forces to help develop materials.

* Rhode Island has had a law since 2000 requiring the education
department to develop material on genocide, human rights, and
slavery, including specifics such as the Holocaust, famine in
Ireland, genocide in Armenia, and Mussolini’s Fascist regime.

* In several states, including New Jersey, Illinois, and New York,
Amistad Commissions have been established to examine and improve the
curriculum related to African-American history and slavery.

Civics/citizenship

* Most states require a course on government, civics, or citizenship,
but to give these subjects more weight, five states now require a
related exam as a graduation requirement. Another five states are
phasing in such exams.

* In 2004, California passed a law in part to ensure that the
history/social science framework would include six documents: The
Declaration of Independence; the Constitution, including the Bill of
Rights; The Federalist Papers; The Emancipation Proclamation; The
Gettysburg Address; and George Washington’s farewell address.

* Since 2003, Missouri has required every school (pre-K through 12th
grade) to devote the equivalent of one class period to the meaning
and significance of Veterans Day.

Financial literacy

* More than half the states have standards for personal finance
education. Nine require testing in the subject, and seven –
including Utah and Georgia most recently – require it for high
school graduation.

Sources: Education Commission of the States; National Council on
Economic Education

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