New social studies standards nearing completion

According to a January 12 e-mail update from the Minnesota Center for Social Studies Education (CSSE), the latest revision of Minnesota's K-12 academic standards in social studies is nearing completion:

The state K-12 social studies standards are in the final phase of revision, with an estimated completion date of mid-February or sooner. The CSSE will send an e-blast as soon as the final draft of the standards is posted on the Minnesota Department of Education website.

The CSSE has received many questions about the possibility of delaying the implementation date. At this point, there has been no legislative action to delay the implementation of the new standards. Therefore, the implementation timeline remains in place and the newly revised social studies standards must be implemented no later than the 2013-2014 school year.

There will be a session on the new standards at the Minnesota Council for the Social Studies Conference on March 5 in St. Cloud. Please join us if you would like to spend some time "digging in" to the new standards with other teachers and curriculum coordinators!

There will also be multiple opportunities for training on the new standards this summer through the Minnesota Department of Education and Minnesota's social studies organizations.

The current standard for history and social studies was created to replace the Profile of Learning in 2004-2005. It was created with an unprecedented level of public input in a relatively short period of time, including public hearings that at times devolved into politically-charged shouting matches. The 2004 standards had plenty of room for improvement (earning only a grade of C from the Fordham Foundation), so after Minnesota schools lived with them for several years and a rigorous and public revision process was conducted, I am anxious to hear what teachers and outside experts have to say next month after the new standards are released.

A constitution, if you can keep it

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. —Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America

The Assistant Deputy Secretary for Innovation and Improvement announces that, pursuant to legislation passed by Congress, educational institutions receiving Federal funding are required to hold an educational program pertaining to the United States Constitution on September 17 of each year. This notice implements this provision as it applies to educational institutions receiving Federal funding from the Department [of Education].—Federal Register: May 24, 2005

There is nothing inherently wrong with observing the day the Constitutional Convention signed the Constitution in 1787, but the devil is often in the details.

To some, Constitution Day represents yet another intrusion by the federal government into the affairs of the states, in this case, education. The federal Department of Education has only been in existence since 1980, yet by the Tenth Amendment, the federal Constitution leaves this vital function to the various states. The Constitution Day provision is another in an unending list of federal mandates imposed on the states.

While few would argue against "an educational program pertaining to the United States Constitution," is a federal law mandating it really necessary? Even if there are schools that are not teaching anything about the Constitution, is a one-day program really going to make a difference?

The mandate's lack of specificity is what's good and bad at the same time. Leaving the specifics about the "educational program" to the states and local school districts is a good thing, if you accept the mandate's legitimacy in the first place. Yet as with the rest of your local school's curriculum and state graduation standards, the Constitutional curriculum must be monitored and vetted by parents and the community:

• Does it teach that the Constitution to be taken as written and amended by the people, or does the Supreme Court have the power to unilaterally create provisions and invalidate existing provisions (the so-called "living Constitution")?
• Does it teach the importance of our founding principles as stated in the Declaration of Independence?
• Does it really teach the Constitution, or attempt to redefine it?

On exiting the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was asked what sort of government they had created. "A republic, if you can keep it," said Franklin. As Irish orator John Philpot Curran observed in 1790, "The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance."

Resources:

• Library of Congress, Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention
• National Archives: Constitution Day teacher resources
• National Constitution Center: Constitution Day
• Hillsdale College: Introduction to the Constitution
• Heritage Foundation: Constitution Day Forum
• Scholar's Notebook: "(Undermining the) Constitution Day"

Why Obama is speaking directly to schoolchildren on September 8

The philosophy of the classroom in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next generation.

—Abraham Lincoln (attributed)

Diffusion of authority among tens of thousands of school districts is a safeguard against centralized control and abuse of the educational system that must be maintained.

—Dwight D. Eisenhower, New York Herald Tribune, February 9, 1955

President Obama will address the nation's schoolchildren directly in their classrooms on Tuesday. More than just a speech, the event will be broadcast on C-SPAN, streamed from the Internet, and be accompanied by downloadable "classroom engagement resources," with thought-provoking content like this:

As the president speaks, teachers can ask students to write down key ideas or phrases that are important or personally meaningful. Students could use a note‐taking graphic organizer such as a “cluster web;” or, students could record their thoughts on sticky notes. Younger children could draw pictures and write as appropriate. As students listen to the speech, they could think about the following:

• What is the president trying to tell me?


• What is the president asking me to do?


• What new ideas and actions is the president challenging me to think about?

Why does the Left in America insist on ever more centralized control of the schools and oppose charter and homeschools, taking control away from parents and local communities?

When an opponent declares, "I will not come over to your side," I calmly say, "Your child belongs to us already... What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.

He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.

—Adolf Hilter

Take away a people's heritage and they are easily persuaded.

Give us the child for eight years and it will be a Bolshevik forever.

—Vladimir Lenin (attributed)

Under federal control of education and soon health care, all that's left for us parents is "breed 'em and feed 'em." The government will take care of the rest, from cradle to grave.

Not only math is "integrated" in Wayzata district

When I heard this year that the Wayzata School District had recently adopted the textbook, Vocabulary from Classical Roots by Norma Fifer and Nancy Flowers (Educators Publishing Service, Cambridge and Toronto), I was pleased.

I am a technical writer by profession, I love language, and insist that my own children learn to communicate effectively in writing and speech. So the study of Greek and Latin roots seemed to me a back-to-basics, classical approach to English instruction.

I was half right.

Classical Roots does indeed teach word strategies and etymologies, but I can also see how world views are being "integrated" into language arts as they have been in integrated math. These word usage examples are from the Fifer and Flowers Classical Roots book (the boldface word is the vocabulary word being studied):

• The perseverance and hard work of Spanish-speaking Mexican immigrants were responsible for the prosperous economy of the Southwest in the nineteenth century.
• History shows that although men have often expected women to be subservient, many women have resisted domination.
• Historian Elizabeth Longford writes that "as playthings or household slaves, women were distorted the world over."
• During his presidency, Jimmy Carter mediated disagreements between Israel and Egypt.
• Although twice elected prime minister of Great Britian, Sir Winston Churchill was considered an academic mediocrity as a schoolboy.
• Environmentalists say that at this juncture we must protect rain forests around the globe to prevent harmful atmospheric changes.
• Because of stringent budget cuts, some schools could no longer finance programs in music and art.
• The Jamestown settlers were long on visionary schemes but short on funds and common sense.
• The repertoire of folk singer Joan Baez includes songs in both Spanish and English.
• The Mexican rebel Emiliano Zapata advocated the rights of peasant farmers against powerful landlords.
• Recognizing the need to build new schools, the community assented to the higher property tax.
• Although the later works of the English writer John Dunne are sermons and serious religious verse, his youthful creations are witty and profane love poems.
• You profane a mosque by entering it with shoes on.
• Her friends and neighbors in the favelas, or slums, didn't realize that Carolina Maria de Jesus was a literary prodigy whose diary would become Brazil's all-time bestseller.
• Although she was a loyal Republican, her views on taxation differ ideologically from party policy.

We've come a long way from "First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen." These statements may be worthy of debate, but notice how they remain unchallenged since they appear in a language arts, and not a social studies textbook. Is the intent here to teach language, or something else?

Free speech, at least when we agree with it

It's the end of the school year, and at high schools in America, teachers, administrators, and staff — God bless them all — are enduring Senior Prank Day. At Bloomington Kennedy High School, three senior boys were barred from participating in Class of 2008 commencement exercises for waving the so-called "Confederate Flag" on school grounds, in violation of school policy.

Considering the fact that Principal Ron Simmons is African-American (and incidentally was principal at Minneapolis North High School for four years), and we presume that unless they skipped U.S. history the trio was aware of the flag's controversial meanings, this senior prank showed an incredible lack of judgment and sensitivity. Like all senior pranksters, they were looking for trouble, and they found it.

The most fascinating quote of the Strib coverage was from the liberal ACLU, which shrugged at the Bloomington case:

On Wednesday, the head of the American Civil Liberties Union in Minnesota said any legal challenge put up by the suspended students' families would have a "very, very slim" chance of succeeding.

"If, in the opinion of the administration, your speech carries the possibility of a material disruption of the educational process, they can censor it," said state ACLU Executive Director Chuck Samuelson. "I wish students had more rights, but they have no rights."

That is, unless you're vigorously defending, before the United States Supreme Court, the students who displayed a pro-drug, anti-Christian message like "BONG HITS 4 JESUS" (Morse v. Frederick). According to an ACLU press release:

"We are disappointed by the Supreme Court's ruling, which allows the censorship of student speech without any evidence that school activities were disrupted," said Douglas K. Mertz, an ACLU cooperating attorney who argued the case [Morse v. Frederick] before the Supreme Court.

History Day

I have had the pleasure of serving as a History Day judge over at Wayzata East Middle School for the past few years. This year I also helped one of the seventh graders at Wayzata West Middle School, a family friend, with his project, which to our delight earned a spot at the regional competition on March 15.

From the National History Day web site:

Each year, more than half a million students, encouraged by thousands of teachers nationwide participate in the NHD contest. Students choose historical topics related to a theme and conduct extensive primary and secondary research through libraries, archives, museums, oral history interviews and historic sites. After analyzing and interpreting their sources and drawing conclusions about their topics’ significance in history, students present their work in original papers, exhibits, performances and documentaries. These products are entered into competitions in the spring at local, state and national levels where they are evaluated by professional historians and educators. The program culminates in a national competition each June held at the University of Maryland at College Park.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, all of this may smack to you of the educational fads of the 1990s designed to minimize academics in the school day, and make learning "fun:" performance-based learning, group learning, discovery learning, lite content, time-consuming, what-did-we-really-learn learning. And I have seen groups of students spend more time on technical issues of PowerPoint, iMovie, and DVD formats, and less time actually learning history.

But what struck me this year about History Day at both middle schools (it's a seventh-grade event in our school district) was the high energy level, the excitement, parental and community involvement, the anticipation, the pride, all over history. I am an advocate for good history education: I served on the citizen panel that wrote the imperfect, though improved, state standards for social studies. So I feel that an event that actually gets kids excited about history can't be all bad.

Something else that I found remarkable was the extensive amount of research that the Internet makes possible. Most student projects I saw were richly illustrated with historic photographs and drawings, gleaned from the Internet. The required bibliographies revealed some Wikipedia citations, but also contemporary newspaper stories (web searches sure beat microfiche searches — remember those?), online encyclopedias, specialized history web sites, and even good old fashioned books. The most ambitious students conducted primary-source interviews and displayed actual artifacts.

Volunteer a few hours of your time next year at your local school to serve as a History Day judge. Your participation will benefit the students, earn you the thanks of teachers, and give you a real appreciation for history education.