NEWS

History standards approved for K-12, despite concerns

Patrick Anderson
panderson@argusleader.com

History teachers across South Dakota will be working with a new set of classroom guidelines after a Monday decision to approve social studies standards.

College professors balked at the new benchmarks because there isn’t a requirement for teaching early American history at the high school level.

In spite of protests, the state Board of Education agreed to overhaul the standards after an almost yearlong public hearing process. There is no requirement for teaching the first 100 years of the nation’s history, including the Revolutionary War and the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, but the rewritten standards do give teachers a choice.

That wasn’t the case in the 2006 standards, replaced by Monday’s board action.

“Our current history standards do not even give an option as to whether it’s comprehensive or modern,” board President Don Kirkegaard said. “It’s strictly modern.”

But optional doesn’t go far enough for some.

That only makes it a “non-standard standard,” said Ben Jones, dean of arts and sciences for Dakota State University in Madison. Jones and other college educators from across the state sent a letter to the board, expressing their discontent with the revisions.

Incoming freshmen arrive unprepared for history because they aren’t learning early American history at the high school level, according to the letter, which was signed by instructors from DSU, University of South Dakota, South Dakota State University, Northern State University, Augustana College, Presentation College, the University of Sioux Falls and Black Hills State University.

And the problem isn’t just a matter of college freshmen being ready to discuss Thomas Paine at a university level. A sound understanding of history and civics can help them when they’re in the voting booth, watching the news and making life decisions, Jones said.

“It’s disabling their citizenship,” Jones said

Cutting out early U.S. history in 11th grade hurts the ability of students to “think historically” when they reach higher education, according to the letter.

“By that, we mean they are unfamiliar with the use of sources, the identification of bias, analysis of information, understanding context and the development and practice of research that aid them both inside and outside the discipline of history,” according to the letter.

Jones served on the work group that drafted the state’s K-12 social studies overhaul, but asked to have his name removed from the project, he said.

“I didn’t want to have to go back to my colleagues and have them say: ‘You agreed to this?’” Jones said.

Classroom reforms are scheduled to take effect in the 2016-17 school year, but teachers will begin training this year. In addition to history, the revised standards also address geography, government and economics learning, from a student’s first day of kindergarten to the day he earns a diploma.

Under the new standards, social studies lessons will encourage more investigation and analysis, focusing on skills students will need for college and a career, such as critical thinking, problem solving and communication.

Benchmarks for classroom teachers are less prescriptive than the old model. The new standards document is 44 pages long, compared to the 117-page standards document approved in 2006.

Common Core protesters also criticized the standards in a final public hearing hosted by the board. A vocal group of parents and South Dakota residents who oppose the consortium-adopted math and reading standards have also voiced their opposition to the social studies benchmarks and recently adopted science standards.

The social studies standards too closely resemble national standards, and could lead to teachers using potentially harmful or offensive material in class, they said.

But the standards don’t dictate what materials teachers use in class, Kirkegaard said.

“We can’t control what’s in the textbooks,” Kirkegaard said. “We’re not adopting the curriculum. We’re just looking at the standards.”