Developing informed citizens. Making connections from the past to the present. Presenting multiple perspectives on critical events in history.
These rank as the top instructional goals of U.S. middle and high school history teachers, according to a new, wide-ranging report from the American Historical Association.
The research, which includes a 50-state analysis of standards, a 3,000-educator survey, and a review of thousands of pages of instructional materials, draws a portrait that stands in stark contrast to right-wing claims of widespread liberal “indoctrination” in social studies classrooms.
While the right imagines that teachers are portraying a negative version of the American story, and the left fears that courses promote “a kind of blunt triumphalism,” the report demonstrates that neither of these scenarios are true, said Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of the history of education at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, who reviewed the report.
“They’re not waving the flag, but they’re also not trampling on the flag,” he said.
So what are U.S. history teachers doing instead? Read on for four takeaways about the state of the subject in American classrooms. For more on the political pressures the teachers surveyed face in today’s polarized landscape, see this story.
Civil Rights Movement and the American Revolution get top billing in U.S. history classes
Most students study U.S. history at least once in middle school—usually 8th grade—and then again for at least one year in high school, the report finds.
Teachers tend to focus on certain eras more than others, with the most popular being the Civil Rights Movement and the American Revolution and founding. About 80 percent of teachers said each of these periods were high priorities for coverage.
This finding isn’t surprising, said Zimmerman. Both of these eras are “absolutely critical to the way we tell the story of America, and the way we deliberate it,” he said.
Still, teachers voiced the need for more training to teach other topics well.
When asked in which eras they lacked sufficient background and support, Native America before European colonization topped the list, with 1 in 5 teachers selecting the option. Also commonly cited were more recent periods: the Great Recession and present day, President Bill Clinton and the New Democrats, and the Information Age.
Even teachers who regularly cover these time periods can find them challenging. Janell Cinquini, a social studies teacher in the Lake Oswego school district in Oregon, teaches a course on post-World War II history at Lakeridge High School.
“The closer you get to current day, the more likely that kids are to take political stances,” said Cinquini. “When you start talking about George W. Bush, or you start talking about decisions that Obama made, they kind of get into their political camps. It makes it harder to keep it about policies and ideas, and not like, ‘You’re OK with what happened there because that was under a Democrat or Republican president.’”
Free online resources are more popular than traditional textbooks
Only about half of all teachers surveyed used a hard copy of a U.S. history textbook. A third had a digitally licensed version.
More common were free, online resources: About three-quarters of teachers said they used these. And the vast majority of teachers—85 percent—use at least some materials that they design and write themselves.
This range of choices on which teachers rely speaks to the decentralized nature of the American education system, said Nicholas Kryczka, the research coordinator on the project.
“Local decisionmaking prevails, and when I say local, I mean all the way down to the classroom teacher,” he said.
Still, he said, there’s a great deal of common ground in what teachers select. The top most popular free resources are:
- Federal museums, archives, and institutions (83 percent of teachers use these occasionally or often)
- PBS Learning Media (79 percent)
- Crash Course U.S. History, a series of informational YouTube videos created by young adult author John Green (79 percent)
- National Geographic (66 percent)
- Teachers Pay Teachers, a lesson sharing platform (61 percent)
Avoiding the textbook is a way to keep students’ attention, said Cinquini.
“Students are so unwilling to read large sections,” she said. “I think it causes us all to be searching for options. We can’t just say, ‘Read your textbook and let’s talk later.’ We’re really looking for engaging material.”
‘Inquiry’ is at the center of instruction. But it’s not always used well
In attempts to engage students, many teachers turn to inquiry-driven lessons.
These assignments are designed to task students with the work of historians: analyzing artifacts and primary source documents from different perspectives to make arguments about the past. Usually, they’re structured around a central question, one “designed to speak to big debates—unresolved issues that can motivate class discussion and set terms for a final assessment,” the report’s authors write.
Not all of these questions are well-designed, though, the report argues. Many ask students to make moral judgments—casting certain figures as heroes or villains, for example, or deciding if historical events were justified.
This framing asks students to litigate the past, when the goal of these activities should be to more deeply understand history—and how it shapes our present, the report’s authors write.
Such a goal require teachers to embrace complexity, said David Bobb, the president of the civics education organization the Bill of Rights Institute. “Rushing to judgment or trying to get to the conclusion is bad inquiry,” he said.
Some teachers fear their subject is seen as another reading block
Other lessons framed as “inquiry” tasks don’t actually focus on historical thinking skills. AHA researchers found that many teachers use document-based lessons with “instrumental outcomes”—asking students to find the main idea of a passage, for example, or use details to support a claim.
With this framing, Kryczka said, “we’re losing the real reason that we introduce students to these primary sources.”
Some teachers interviewed said they thought their administrators treated history classes as simply another opportunity for students to practice literacy skills with nonfiction texts.
“It has a lot to do with the pressures that administrators face, which often has to do with test scores,” he said.
