Why is Social Studies struggling?

I happened across this post at Number 2 Pencil linking to a post by Polski3 on problems with history education. Issues noted include
• NCLB’s emphasis on reading and math
• History teachers are not typically history majors
• Textbooks are dry as brick, and just a heavyPolski3 adds the following
• Intentional neglect of history
• Political correctness
• Parents who’d rather entertain than educate their children

I think the issue most worth pursuing is that too many history teachers are teaching without a history background. The rest are either red herrings or are actually useful to history. Do we suppose that illiterate or innumerate students will comprehend history? History is the study of authentic documents. If I hand out a speech by Henry VIII to Parliament, can the students make sense of it? Only if they are competent readers. If I throw a pair of data sets on the wall of women’s participation in the workforce, can students recognize what we’re doing (rate of change, percentage calculations, math reasoning) in order to interpret the data? Let them emphasize reading and math in the early grades; I want students who have those skills in my class. Second, too much of history and social studies is abstract and is difficult for concrete learners to grasp. There is a limit to how effective teaching about different times and places can be without introducing all kinds of mental errors that would require unlearning. What can be done is to have some of these reading materials young children are expected to read and master include a heavy dose of biography (Franklin, Washington, Lincoln, &c) historical adventure (Lewis and Clark, Johnny Tremain, Kit Carson, &c) and exiting events (Kittyhawk, Gettysburg, Pearl Harbor) which will have a natural appeal to children. But this isn’t teaching history so much as it is making history part of the fabric of reading and learning. The social studies taught in most of Missouri in elementary school are foundational civics and economics. They learn the three branches of government (legislative, executive, and judicial), the division of federal, state, and local government (federalism), and so forth.

Textbooks as they exist now should be treated as reference books to be consulted for elaboration on key terms and events, not to be read for content. Readings should be more intensive than any textbook would be anyway. Teachers should select readings (primary and secondary) based on what they want to emphasize and encourage students to consult textbooks to look up people, dates, and places when they missed something in their notes. This would be much easier for teachers with BA’s in history (or better, MA’s), but I get ahead of myself.

Political correctness is a problem, but not for history itself. History is still being taught; it’s just not the content, emphasis, or understanding that many people think should be taught. This is part of the social reconstuctionist agenda. But there is a difference between arguing that history is being taught poorly and being taught with somebody else’s political slant. Again, this just isn’t a problem where the teacher selects their own documents and materials. I knew a civics/sociology teacher who used the text as a device to argue against. He had the class perform a close reading of the textbook during class and evaluated its bias, sources, and politics covering the material in the text. Good teachers can make use of poor materials.

Parents generally regard the school as the people who should do the education, leaving them to do the entertainment. If I could change something about parents, I’d encourage parents to communicate to their children that its essential to acquire skills, to encourage a love of learning, a curiosity, and an interest in the world around them. Taking kids to museums, historic sites, and the like are great, but its also great if kids build a robot, give up television for telescopes, take up sculpture, play jazz clarinet, or write poetry. Any intellectually engaged student will learn more, will have learning skills, and is easier to teach. Spending family time on my subject would just be gravy.

That leaves us with teachers who teach history, but don’t have history degrees. This is the cause I take to be the primary source of weak history learning. So let’s consider it in greater detail. The best available dataset is the School and Staffing Survey from 1999-2000 from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics. (some revisions here)The NCES calculate the statistics several different ways. They survey out of area teachers by the following criteria: main assignment field, classes taught, and students taught. They consider subjects and sub-fields. They break teachers down by those with majors, those who just minored, and those who are merely certified, and they run combinations of these as well.

At the middle grades, 52% of teachers who teach social studies have a major in one of the social studies. That’s higher than any other academic field, exceeded only by art, music, and physical education. The other fields show majors in the mid-40’s, except math, where the figure is 33%. If we look at the number of courses taught in the social studies in the middle grades, 40% of them are taught by people with majors, which is only somewhat higher than other fields (such as 32% in English). If we look at specific history classes, the number of classes taught by history majors is only 22%. These numbers look better if we look at the number of students. 49% of students in the middle grades learn their social studies from a teacher with a degree in the social studies. 29% of students in the middle grades have history majors teaching them in distinctly history classes.

There are several issues here. First, which is more meaningful the percent of social studies teachers with degrees in one of the social studies, or the percent of history teachers who are teaching history? Is it OK for a certified geography major to teach whatever your 7th grade curriculum is? Is the work at a level of generality (a course that is multi-disciplinary, so that the American colonies unit looks at the geography, economics, politics, culture, and history of the colonies, not just the history) that any one of these majors is just as good over the course of the year as any other major? Second is the level of content difficult enough that an allied field is out of its depth teaching across disciplinary boundaries? Should we take as the more meaningful figure the fact that 49% of social studies students are taught by certified teachers with a major as discussed, or should we look to the 29% of history students? How many classes are that specifically historical? In my observation, middle school is pretty multi-disciplinary with strong doses of geography and political science a part of the curriculum. As such my own sense is that the content difficulty is light enough that a political science major can handle the history and geography, and frankly an anthropology major (especially one with a grounding in archaeology) can handle the whole thing as well. I also think that there is so much geography and civics along side whatever history we have in American history, and geography and archaeology along side the world history, that no one discipline can claim to be essential and denounce the other majors. So I contend that the 49% figure is the better for the middle grades. As such, social studies as more majors teaching students than all other academic fields, exceeded only by art, music, and physical education.

Let’s look next at high school. 79% of high school social studies teachers have a degree in the social studies. That’s better than all the other academic fields again. English is 76%, math is 73%, and science is 75%. If we look beyond the department someone is in, and look to the courses, only 63% of courses are taught by someone with a degree in the field, and only 33% of history courses are taught by people with a major in history. This is comparable to the other academic fields (62%, 59%, 65% as above). In history, that 33% compares to some of the sub-disciplines in science, where 48% of biology courses are taught by biology majors, 31% for chemistry, 16% for geology, and 23% for physics. If we look, finally, at the students, we find that 72% of students in a social studies class are taught by someone with a major in one of the social studies. This exceeds every other subject, except science, where there are far more core sub-fields. Only history is a core sub-field in the social studies (indeed, history is the queen of the social studies in a way that neither biology, chemistry, or physics could say about science). While there are psychology and sociology courses at most high schools, and many high schools require a geography credit, history dominates the social studies. And the curriculum requirements for courses tend to rely much more on the history skills and knowledge than they did in the middle grades. At high school it is reasonable to argue that any degree in the social studies is no longer just as good as any other. However, we might ask at this point about minors. While its pretty clear that a history major would not do as well as a psych major for a high school psych course, what about the history major who minored in psych? Unfortunatly, the data doesn’t really tell us how many people were majored in the main assignment field, and minored in the course subject area. Though it can be argued that the number of sociology majors with history minors is small, are they as qualified to teach most history classes as the history majors are? The data offer no specificity here. So, while 72% if all social studies students are taught by someone with a major in one of the social studies fields, only 38% of students in a history class are getting a history major. Again, this compares to the science sub-fields (55%, 39%, 21%, and 34%).

So, what kind of difference is there between a political science major and a history major in the teaching of American history? Students are getting as many broad field majors as they are in any other field. For example, the survey doesn’t even bother to separate creative writing and literature types in the English areas, presumably because every course involves both writing and literature. But that also means that every English student is getting at least partly an out-of-area teacher even when the survey says they have a major in the course subject area. Certainly the best case is for those 38% of history students that receive teaching from a history major. Less desirable is the situation for those students whose teacher is a social studies field major, but is teaching some allied field. How many students this applies to is hard to measure because only the sub-field of history is recorded. At a minimum its 35%, but is almost certainly higher. The next category are those who are certified for social studies, but have no major in the field, some 12% (actually 12.4%, basically one in eight). As it turns out, 76% of students learned social studies from someone with a major or a minor in social studies, 4% more than those who just had a major. Only 9% of students had teachers who lacked both a major and a minor, despite being certified, some 3% less than those whose teachers lacked a major. The percent of teachers who lack a major, a minor, and a certificate is about 1%.

In conclusion, the number of teachers who have a major in their main assignment field is about the same, or better, for the social studies as it is for other disciplines. Like the sciences, the number of history majors accounts for only a third of all social studies teachers. Unlike the science sub-fields, history dominates the social studies at the higher grade levels. What remains unclear is how significant this is. While the survey demonstrates that slightly more than a third of all social studies teachers have majored in the allied fields of the social studies other than history, how effective they are teaching a field dominated by history remains a question.