Why Students Don't Know Much About History

By Diane Ravitch

College professors regularly complain that their students know little about American history or the history of any other part of the world. And with good reason. On the last national test of American history in 1994, conducted by the federally funded National Assessment of Educational Progress, 57 percent of high school seniors were "below basic," as low as it is possible to score. These seniors had taken a U.S. history course in either 11th or 12th grade; their scores were unaffected by whether they studied history in the same year that the test was given. The NAEP results in history were worse than in any other academic subject area.

Why should this be so? One reason is that history too often is taught by teachers who did not study history as undergraduates. The National Center for Education Statistics reported in 1996 that "over half of all public school students enrolled in history or world civilization classes in grades 7-12 ... were taught by teachers who did not have at least a minor in history." Fifty-nine percent of students in middle school and 43 percent of high school students were studying history with a teacher who had not earned at least a history minor in college.

The NCES assumes that teachers who lack either a major or a minor in their main academic field are teaching out of field. Most people now teaching social studies or history in the schools have neither a major nor a minor in history. In some states, people can be licensed to teach social studies without ever having taken a single...