Alan Singer no longer belongs to the National Council for the Social Studies. He explains why here.
History and social studies were marginalized by No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, which focus only on reading and math as make-or-break testing subjects. Now Common Core calls for “close reading,” analyzing text without context. It is impossible to understand history or social studies without context.
Singer writes:
“My problem is that in an effort to survive, the NCSS has largely abandoned its commitment to these ideas, twisting itself into a pretzel to adapt to national Common Core standards and to satisfy influential conservative organizations that they are not radical, or even liberal. I suspect, but cannot document, that the organization’s membership has precipitously declined during the past two decades and it has increasingly depended financial support for its conferences and publications from deep-pocketed traditional and rightwing groups who advertise and have display booths.
“According to a NCSS position paper, “The National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) is increasingly alarmed by the erosion of the importance of social studies in the United States. This erosion, in large part, is a consequence of the implementation of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Since the introduction of NCLB, there has been a steady reduction in the amount of time spent in the teaching of social studies, with the most profound decline noticed in the elementary grades.”
“In an effort to counter the Common Core push for detextualized skill-based instruction and assessment that has further marginalized social studies education, the NCSS is promoting what it calls “College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework,” a campaign I initially supported. It recently distributed Teaching the College, Career and Civic Life (C3) Framework: Exploring Inquiry-based Instruction in Social Studies (NCSS Bulletin 114) edited by Kathy Swan and John Lee. However, through its choice of partners, its rigid adherence to Common Core lesson guidelines, and the sample material it is promoting, the NCSS has virtually abandoned not just meaningful social studies education, but education for democracy and citizenship as well.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What a far cry from the cutting edge the social studies had between the 60’s to 90’s. I was happy to taught it then, when inquiry, projects, interdisciplinary work, primary source investigations, simulations and the socratic method were our tools.
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Well, I wish I’d spent the 70s and 80s in your social studies class!! I remember HATING it, all the trivial memorization, MC tests, dry textbook reading…Once I actually did what you describe, in college, I loved it so much I became a social studies teacher!!! While we may not love all elements of the C3, I do think it is an attempt to bring primary source investigation, socractic method, research and the like to more SS classrooms. It will likely be screwed up, with canned lesson plans and sample investigations…
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Bringing history and social studies back into the fold will prove to be another opportunity for reformers to test and punish. In addition to “college and career ready,” there’s a third “C” that’s been popping up with them lately: “citizenship-ready.” You can bet the reformers will cite our declining mastery of history and social studies (using anecdotes, of course) to push yet another layer of accountability.
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Presumably, “Citizenship-ready” is code for “CitizenKane-ready”
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http://www.wsj.com/articles/civics-instruction-moves-up-in-class-1419613231
more civics, less close reading
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This is just like what they have done to ELA over the past few years. They really should take the “Art” out of Language Arts, as there is nothing even remotely artistic about the current CC ELA curriculum, which also stresses long and tedious “close reading” as the means to all ends. Spending three weeks on one story will not teach the literary elements nearly as well as reading several stories over that time period so that repetition can come into play. And if they believe that close reading will get someone ready for college, it is hard to believe that a college student would have enough time to put this approach into practice given the amount of reading required in college.
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IMHO, this is part of the rebranding of CCSS.
LATIMES, 1-5-2015, an article entitled “Students at struggling Drew Middle School learn skill through debate.”
Link: http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-drew-debate-20150105-story.html
As the received wisdom of the “thought leaders” of the self-styled “education reform” movement remind us daily:
“Trouble, oh we got trouble,
Right here in River City!
With a capital “T”
That rhymes with “P”
And that stands for Pool,
That stands for pool.
We’ve surely got trouble!
Right here in River City,
Right here!
Gotta figure out a way
To keep the young ones moral after school!
Trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble…”
Sorry, that’s from THE MUSIC MAN, a verse from “Ya Got Trouble.”
But to solve those troubles troubles troubles at Drew MS—which are? Well, standardized test scores are far far too low, so the principal (Mr. Nnamdi Uzor) is changing the culture by pushing exciting new stuff like a debate. It’s working: “The students said learning through debate was far more exciting than reading textbooks and taking multiple-choice exams. Several became so inspired that they organized a trip with parents to skid row in downtown L.A. to observe the homeless problem firsthand.”
Not a one of you old fuddy duddy teachers in “traditional public schools” would have thought of that, now would ya? Look, I’ve seen THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE and TOTAL RECALL. I bet my own memories are all false and implanted—or are they?
😧
In any case, be honest, you purveyors [aka public school teachers] of the “soft bigotry of low expectations”—would you have done what the following did? “Three Drew teachers, Roxanne Martin, Christine Baccus and Tunisia Haqq-Adams, worked with the students for weeks, teaching them to formulate pertinent questions, research answers, sift fact from opinion and articulately present information.”
And just what is the font, inspiration and goad that got all this genuine teaching and learning going? “The Common Core standards are emphasizing such skills in an effort to guide students to think critically and solve problems rather than memorize and repeat facts on tests. The standards also ask students to drive more of their own learning. Uzor said the debates have cultivated all of these skills.”
Because I know what it’s like to be [literally] sucker punched, in anticipation of data-drivel objections by shills and trolls, I am going to bob, weave, and counter with—Am I making fun of the principal, teachers and students? Absopositively NOT!
As proof, I give you the paragraph following the one about the students that went down to skid row: “Alessandra Salguero, an eighth-grader who initiated the trip, said the students were particularly moved by the homeless children living under a bridge with their mothers. ‘We put ourselves in their shoes,’ she said. ‘Many of us are a paycheck away from being homeless ourselves.’”
Love it!
Could this even be a way of sneaking in some authentic teaching and learning under cover of CCSS nonsense? Don’t know.
But just wait for the self-proclaimed advocates and promoters and enablers of CCSS to point to such things and declare themselves the inspiration for all such EduExcellence.
As well as the invention of fire, the wheel and sliced bread.
😎
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People like to say stuff like “every student should have to do” X or Y, and I do, too, do: Every student should take a debate class. Talk about “skills.”
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FLERP!: I wouldn’t go so far as to say every student should take a debate class—
I took a speech class in HS, and it was one of the best things I did in HS.
But I do think something along those lines—debate or speech or theater or whatever puts someone in front of an audience and makes him/her say something something coherent and takes time and effort and some creativity—
For that, I’m all in.
Just my dos centavitos worth…
Thank you for your comments.
😎
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Yes, KTA, it is a rebranding. I’ve read the ones for high school and any student that can do this isn’t just ready for college, but ready to 4.0 college classes. Standards again written by foundations and professors. When I read it I think “what exactly is it that professors will teach?” If my students could ace the Next Generation Social Studies standards they wouldn’t need college. They could just get a degree upon high school graduation.
I do a lot of this stuff in class but it does reduce creative thinking. It is more about form and format. So for example, analyzing documents can be done through a regimented approach like Soapstone. This is fine but is is limiting.
Students aren’t working toward actual interpretation but rather trying to access how someone else (testmakers, teacher, whoever is ranked higher) will interpret the documents.
I’m not saying there is no value, but it is rather a very limiting way to think about the information. It’s about students adopting processes more than anything else.
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I know, KTA, that you know that this happens at real public schools, including mine. I’m the debate coach, and learning through speech and debate is far more valuable than any stupid test. Talk about authentic assessment–you can’t fake not knowing the information in a debate or speech!
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Of course they sold out. They got Gates Foundation grants, just like everyone else who sold out. Follow the money, folks. http://www.socialstudies.org/news_and_advocacy/2014-09-05-8789
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“History and social studies were marginalized by No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top”.
Go figure. How many “citizens” would stand idle if they had a true understanding of
our history. The “reformers” version of history, social studies, or civics, will do NOTHING
to improve matters. Political consciousness is hardly their cause or objective. The LACK
of civic literacy, goes hand in hand with exploitation.
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I’ve really come to respect Professor Singer. So I found his view that, “… the NCSS has virtually abandoned not just meaningful social studies education, but education for democracy and citizenship as well” to be particularly disturbing.
Corporate reform efforts in our public schools are clearly a threat to our democracy. That fact has been documented over and over again on this blog.
I believe that social studies teachers have a special obligation to oppose what is going on because government is our stock-in-trade…..it’s what we are about. If not us, who then? How can we stand in front of our students day after day and encourage them to get involved and then sit by idly and watch this lunacy take over our schools? Or worse yet, aid and abet this destruction.
Are there any organizations of social studies teachers working to oppose what is going on?
Thank you Professor Singer for speaking out and offering real leadership.
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John, I agree that the CCSS is a threat to our democracy –because it substitutes dry skills instruction for learning the facts about our history, politics, and reality in general. But it seems to me that learning the facts about the world (i.e. a traditional liberal arts education) has been under assault ever since the 19th Century in this country Reading Diane’s Left Back, one sees that there has been over the last century one assault after another over another upon teaching the key facts about the world we live in. Anything but facts! Our students shouldn’t learn “how to analyze a primary source”. They need to learn the railroad strike of 1877; the Haymarket Square incident; the Triangle Shirtwaist fire; the Sherman Anti-trust Act. Only these concrete particulars will truly empower them to think critically about the world we confront. Facts are more subversive than “critical thinking skills”.
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I agree that focusing on critical thinking skills at the expense of facts is a mistake.
It will be VERY interesting to see what facts get cut out of the social studies curriculum as we all move forward. The New York State curriculum was already shortchanging certain topics to begin with. I read a really interesting critique several years ago about how the U.S. history course was not focusing enough on women’s history.
Of course, the curriculum in science and ELA will continue to raise political issues. But when we talk social studies we’re at the heart of the matter, I think. I keep imagining a group of like minded social studies teachers who might at least keep a careful eye on what is going on. But then I get tied up with just trying to get ready for the next morning’s classes.
It is very sad to read Professor SInger’s comments about the NCSS. Take care.
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I have said for years that many social studies people are selling out by demanding more testing and “skills” instruction in history, geography, civics, etc. As social studies teachers, we should NOT be following everyone else off a cliff. We should be leading the way out of this mess–by showing other ways education can be done besides drill and kill. Instead, social studies “leaders” nationwide are doubling down on test and punish curriculum, making tests that are even longer and more pointless than even the other standardized tests. Recently, my district cut state history education in favor of a bland “social studies skills” class. It’s disgusting.
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