Reform in the Last Decade

Marjorie W. Bingham

Reprinted from the OAH Magazine of History
10 (Fall 1995). ISSN 0882-228X
Copyright (c) 1995, Organization of American Historians

Though I have been involved in many of the history reform movements of the last decade, my major claim to this association of the Tenth Anniversary of the Magazine of History, is that I seconded Terrie Epstein’s motion for OAH sponsorship of a newsletter for teachers.  And I got in trouble for it.  At the time, I was on the Teaching Division of the AHA, and staff members there wanted to know how I could let such a good idea go to a rival organization.  “OAH acted fast,” was all I could say.  But I do remember also the conjunction of events that led to a group of teachers—Rockefeller Scholars—being at the convention to support Terrie’s views.  These Rockefeller Scholars became a nucleus of board members and supporters that would continue reform within the historical organizations also with sympathetic supporters like Anne Scott, Joan Hoff-Wilson, Lou Harlan, Howard Mehlinger, and Kenneth Jackson.  It was, in other words, an occasion that was prepared to listen to Terrie’s ideas.

About the fate of the Magazine of History and the past years of reform, I have mixed feelings.  So I thought I’d arrange my remarks as I set up classroom debates—giving some hints at the good and bad of the Spartans versus the Athenians, or whether Langston Hughes or Richard Wright understood the Harlem Renaissance better.  I’ll give three points on either side and let you all consider the “opposing viewpoints.”  But before I begin let me explain what I mean by reform for history.  First, history should be taught as a major subject in the schools; second, it should be good history, creative and analytical; and third, teachers should have a respected role in the historical community.  I will take the last point first since I’m the K-12 teacher on the panel.

Here’s the good news on the last decade concerning teacher’s involvement in the academic community and reform groups.  I remember one of the first meetings of teachers when a teacher stood up and said he didn’t wear his OAH badge because he was embarrassed to have it name him as a high school teacher.  And who could forget Howard Shorr’s indignation, as chair of one of the early Focus on Teaching Days, when a professor asked him why a teacher was at an OAH meeting.  In the last decade teachers have found a voice in the history profession in a variety of ways.  Let me quickly just list a few:

New Organizations:

World History Association
Organization of History Teachers
National Council for History Education

New Journals:

Magazine of History
OHT Newsletter
World History Journal
History Matters!
Concord Review

National Endowment for the Humanities:

Masterwork Grants
Summer Seminars
Summer Institutes
Independent Study
NEH Teacher/Scholars

Department of Education:

History Institutes

National Endeavor on Curriculum:

Bradley Commission
NCSS Charting a Course
College Board Guidelines
UCLA National Standards
NAEP Guidelines
NBPTS

Changes in OAH, AHA, NCSS:

Creation of the History Teaching Alliance/National History Education Network

Representation of teachers: 

AHA nomination for VP, serve on Program Committee, Membership Committee, Women’s Committee; OAH teacher elected to council, Magazine Advisory Board, Nominating Board (these beyond “teacher” slots)

Awards Recognizing Teaching:

AHA:
Asher Award 1987
Robinson 1978
Roelker 1992
Gilbert 1995
Beveridge 1996

OAH:
Tachau

These changes have meant more interplay between academics and K-12 teachers and a greater sense of community.

So how could anyone complain about such progress?  The main problem, I think, is that we’re still operating on a kind of random acts of kindness approach to teachers.  The profession still values research at the expense of teachers; in-service in the schools is not discipline based, teachers are generally ghetto-ized in the professional organizations to teaching committees.  Not since the early days of the AHA, for example, have teachers served on the Council.  The OAH has had no teachers on the Program Committee in the last few years.  There is a real need for an analytical report, on the line of the Rose Report on women in the profession, to see how teachers of history may have a greater voice.  Financial considerations increasingly mean that teachers do not come to conventions and criticisms of NEH programs may mean further distancing of teachers from the discipline.  Bill Bennett, for example, seems to feel in his testimony about NEH Seminars before Congress that teachers just become brainwashed by the professors and that they can’t think clearly enough to recognize bias.  As far as I can tell, though the American Enterprise Institute hasn’t called me back on the subject, no teachers serve on their committee to examine the National Standards.  Part of the way in which teachers have come together has been through a series of national curriculum projects and now even those attempts, like the National Standards, are under attack.  Despite a decade of reform few history faculties have established long term relationships with neighboring school districts, nor have they invited teachers to consider with them how university curriculums fit community needs.  Teachers are wearing their name tags, but they pay only brief visits to the platforms.

The second point of debate is whether or not there has been increased concern that history will be taught.  Let me just give a personal example from my own social studies department.  Ten years ago, the argument in our department was whether or not we could get rid of the requirement for driver’s training and substitute another semester of American history.  Now the department is arguing over how three years of history will be arranged.  The current debate over the National Standards is a divisive one, but the debate is, after all, about what history should be taught, not whether social studies should be substituted for it.  In the last decade we’ve seen many efforts to bring history back to the curriculum—the California Curriculum, the Bradley Commission, and NCSS Charting a Course.  The Bradley Commission has distributed 55,000 copies of its report and is starting another printing.  Networks of teachers and academics in New York, California, Alabama, and Ohio have created remarkable networks to protect and encourage history in the schools.  Nevertheless, we can still look with envy at the geographers who have financial backing to create long lasting institutes, jazzy versions of their national standards, and, at least in my state, university co-operation to make entrance requirements fit their discipline.  In this time of controversy over the National Standards we need to make sure the public understands that controversy is one of the delights of history and not one of its dangers.  We need to encourage, at the least, state adoption of American history and world history requirements for graduation—with no acceptance of vaguely labeled “studies” or “problems” courses.

On the third and last opposing views, history has to be better history—more creative and more analytical.  Three points are encouraging in the last decade.  First there have been better materials available to teachers.  The Magazine of History has taken a leadership role here, I think, by focusing on particular eras, providing historiography and lessons to challenge a textbook approach.  The lesson plans from the UCLA Center have also fostered changes.  The AHA pamphlet series helps keep scholarship up to date.  Joy Haskin’s series for the grade school has meant lively readings and discussions—no longer in those elementary schools who use it is social studies confined, as I once found in evaluating a school district, to 2:15 in the afternoon.  Further, teachers are encouraged through NEH programs and summer institutes to become more knowledgeable, more insightful creators of history themselves.  Students too, through the Concord Review and National History Day, are doing good history.  Currently, over ½ million young people take part in National History Day.  In Minnesota, for example, in the last eight years the number taking part has grown from 160 to 15,000.  Computers, a new history TV network, historical societies—there has been a remarkable growth in ways and communities in which history is done.

Nevertheless, there are major problems.  Financial cutbacks mean fewer institutes, less supplemental materials, and fewer chances for teachers around the country to exchange ideas.  Further, I think we’re still stuck in the “lesson plan syndrome”—professors doing academics and teachers doing lessons.  Intricate monographs on one level and teachers doing broad synthesis of centuries in world history on the other.  One of the features I like most in the Magazine of History is the historiography article.  Three pages on differing views of the Vietnam War help focus students—and the teacher—on where to begin to think about an era.  We need more history writing that is readable, designed not for show but for insight.  (Sometimes I think the Turner Thesis still remains a major topic in American history because it can be read and absorbed by an AP student in about an hour.)  Faced with dense monographs on one hand and bland textbooks on the other, teachers are often still isolated in their translating roles.

Here, then, are varying positions on history reform.  And I will end with my own view, which I would never do in the classroom before a debate.  It has been a remarkable decade.  But I also remember the fragile beginnings of the Magazine of History, of financial problems, changing editors, redefinitions of the purpose, trying to get teachers to write for it.  So much depended on some good people, like Joan Hoff-Wilson, Mike Regoli, and Arnita Jones to see it through.  Reform cycles in education are equally fragile—and need good people to institutionalize change and persevere.  I wish us all luck.