Social studies curricula shouldn’t be about me, me, me, writes Brendan Miniter in Opinion Journal.
The new social studies often rests on “student-centered instruction” which allows students to be their own learning guides. The starting premise is that students can learn only what is familiar and directly relevant to them. Thus social studies in kindergarten through the third grade teaches students first about family, then local public servants like firemen and policemen. It also holds that members of a racial minority aren’t immediately capable of learning about people who are of a different race, so black kids read about the Great Zimbabwe kingdom, not Columbus. This concentric-circle approach leaves students unprepared for serious analysis. But mostly, students find it boring. To combat boredom, teachers use pictures, videos, music and other “hands on” tools to displace reading and writing. We might call it dumbing-down.
Students learn that facts are a matter of opinion, so why bother to learn any? Yet, many young people don’t have strongly held opinions either. They just don’t care.
The percentage of 18- to 24-year-olds who voted fell to 32% in 1996 and 2000, from 50% in 1972. A study in 2000 found that only 28.1% of college freshman kept up to date with politics, a record low and down from 60.3% in 1966.
Students do well with a knowledge-based curriculum, advises the Fordham Foundation, which is focusing on history and civics curricula. And minority students can learn about people with different color skins.
Via Cris Simpson, who’s home-schooling on the classical model:
When a kid sees what the Sumerians were doing 5,000 years before he was born, it’s hard for him to even form the thought that he’s the center of the universe.
Most American kids can meet that challenge.
It’s funny - as a Chinese kid growing up in a largely Indian/Haitian neighbourhood, me and my Filipino best friend were primarily interested in ancient Greece/Egypt/Persia. And dinosaurs. Lots and lots of dinosaurs.
Er, that would be, “my Filipino best friend and I”. Oops.
I wouldn’t read too much into those figures comparing voting rates and political interest to 1966 and 1972. We had this little thing going on back then called the War in Viet Nam and its accompanying draft, which had the effect of focusing a great many young minds on public affairs.
It’s not necessarily a bad thing when a lot of young people are not heavily involved in public affairs. One of the things this usually means is that times are good enough that they can just get on with their lives.
Not that this touchy-feely social studies curriculum is a good idea, but I don’t think you should pin too much on it.
I onxw read a book by an African guy who was fascinated by Eskimos and always wanted to go to the arctic (and finally made it). That’s what being human is all about, not the concentration on people “just like you.”
C S Lewis once referred to “relentless and unsmiling concentration on self” as the true mark of Hell. The objective of many educators seems to be to impose this orientation on as many people as possible.