Growth and Conflict of the California Public School - Case Study Example

Eighth Grade History Curriculum in California: Competent but Not Complete [ID The California public school eighth grade history curriculum has the theme, “Growth and Conflict”. It emphasizes United States history until the early twentieth century (California Department of Education, 2005). Its focus is on the way that the history up until the twentieth century evolved out of political, economic, civic, religious, racial and gender struggle and conflict. This is an interesting focus, but it fails on two grounds: It is too redundant, going over ground that has been covered and will be covered again; and its focus, while nominally on conflict, actually ends up obscuring that conflict, making history less relevant to current situations and depriving students of the ability to understand salient social conflict issues that continue to the present day. The states process for determining its history curriculum was to consult educators in the spirit of Brown v. Board and try to focus on the way that education is key to equality and civic participation (California Department of Education, 2005, pp. i-10). They use a framework of Goal and Curriculum Strands, such as historical, ethical, cultural, geographic, economic and sociopolitical literacy, national identity, constitutional heritage, civics, and participation, critical thinking and study skills (California Department of Education, 2005, p. iii-26). Unfortunately, the focus of the curriculum, while certainly improved, is still not within the recommendations of relevant national organizations (Schlene, 1991). One of the major problems with the eighth grade California curriculum is redundant curriculum spiraling with the 11th grade. There is currently a debate as to how 8th and 11th grade history should be taught (Schlene, 1991). One camp, represented by the Bradley Commission, argues for teaching up to the Civil War (not until the early twentieth century) in the 8th grade than afterwards in the 11th. Another camp, represented by the National Commission on School Studies, recommends instead some of the same material and timespan with a different focus: World view in the 8th grade, a specific and comprehensive focus on American history and geography after the 1900s in the eleventh. One could argue for any number of different combinations. For example: The curriculum spiral prior to the eighth grade emphasizes a lot about the Pilgrims, the Revolution and Abraham Lincoln (California Department of Education, 2005). The eighth grade could focus on the post-Civil War period, with the eleventh grade being a global review with new skills. But the problem is that the California curriculum is none of these things. As Schlene puts it, “However, the reality of most United States history classes today is that each begins with colonialization and continues, in some cases, all the way up to the Great Depression. The simple explanation for not covering the rest of 20th-century United States history is lack of time. The school year ends before the students can be exposed to several key events of the 20th century. Frequently, 8th- and 11th-grade United States history classes cover almost identical material. It is not surprising that students often find the study of history redundant, irrelevant, and boring” (1991). Essentially, the current California curriculum is the worst of all possible worlds: By failing to require teachers to get to the modern era, they encourage redundancy of teaching while not preparing students adequately for high school. They cover the same material again, but cover it badly. It is especially important to note that modern history and ties to it are especially important for making sure that students are invested in history. This is common sense: Students are invested in things that are relevant to their lives. Obviously history has impacts on students, but not as much as modern history, the history of students great-grandparents, grandparents and parents. By spending so much time reviewing and re-reviewing the antebellum period and the period before World War II, the California curriculum is guaranteeing its irrelevance to the lived experiences of its students. To be fair to the curriculum, part of this is because curriculum construction is the art of the possible. There has to be some redundancy for a variety of reasons. First: It is unlikely that students will remember everything from their fifth or eighth grade class. Eleventh grade curricula cant be constructed based on the logic that students will remember what was taught three years ago. Second: Students transfer schools. Different schools have different standards. Curricula then has to be designed as if all other schools were incompatible. Third: Schools have to account for homeschooling, charter schools and other alternate schooling types, which causes even less uniformity in the system. Finally: Not all schools are of equal quality. Some underfunded schools might not be able to cover the material as well, or might have insufficient or old textbooks. Schools therefore need to construct some redundancy. That having been said, what is the point of a unified curriculum at the state level if the curriculum must be compromised for practical concerns? The curriculum is quite broad. It covers civic, economic, social, political, religious, cultural, racial and gender issues (California Department of Education, 2005, pp. 100-115). The steps go as follows: 1. The major events of the pre-Constitutional period. This includes the Great Awakening, itself immensely complex and requiring a lot of religious understanding; the philosophy behind the Declaration of Independence; and impact on contemporary nations like France. 2. The U.S. Constitution. This is much simpler, but requires understanding the Magna Carta and Enlightenment philosophy as well as the contemporary debates of the period. 3. The American political system. Also relatively simple. 4. “Aspirations and ideals”. This one is immensely complex, as it requires not only understanding multiple important speeches such as Washingtons Farewell Address but also the ideology of industrial capitalism and daily life. 5. Foreign policy. A relatively simple module. 6. Divergent paths. This immensely complex module involves cleavages along racial lines, between city and country, between industrial and non-industrial; immigration, itself a source of multiple social cleavages; and geography such as physical obstacles for railroads and canals. From here, the modules concern, respectively, the South, the West, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Industrial Revolution leading up to World War I. Unsurprisingly, then, the curriculum is not very deep (Schlene, 1991). It is true that, in terms of curriculum spiraling and fidelity, the curriculum of adjacent grades must include world and state history. The problem is that this is simply too much to meaningfully cover. Teachers end up covering a lot of redundant material while not actually lending any new light to the issue substantially different from prior or following American history classes. This is, again, the worst of both worlds: Redundant and shallow teaching. It is true that the focus on social conflict in particular is worthwhile, yet this focus is too unevenly distributed. For example: Social conflict in the pre-Constitutional period was omnipresent (Zinn, 2003). Sharecroppers, indentured servants and slaves all had tension between each other, yet also were pitted against land-owners. Indeed, many use the work of Zinn among others to argue that pre-capitalist elite relations caused racism, since capitalists would create rifts between the working class (Taylor, 2002). By not discussing the pre-Constitutional social conflicts, the curriculum undermines its own focus on conflict and change. Similarly, like almost all curricula, the class focuses on African-Americans almost entirely when they impinge upon the white national narrative. There is information on Reconstruction, but not a primary focus on black exoduses or the treatment of blacks in the North and West. This fits into a narrative that demonizes the pre-Civil Rights Movement South, while not giving the needs of African-Americans its due. Native Americans and their struggles also only fit into one module, module 8.8 (California Department of Education, 2005, pp. 111-112). The genocide of the Native Americans from the pre-Constitution era to after the Civil War, onto the Native American rights protests at Alcatraz and elsewhere, is an important part of American history. A narrative focused on growth and conflict should put this first and foremost! It seems that the curriculum is not able to focus on the real costs of growth, and is doing so in a conflict-blind way. It is insane to talk about growth without discussing who lost in the growth, whose land was taken so that America could expand under the doctrine of manifest destiny. Similarly, Asian-Americans do not get their own module. They are fit into the Gold Rush and train sections. This is despite the importance of Chinese and other Asian immigrants over the generations. And the nativist movement, concerns over Latina/o and Chicana/o integration, etc. are also distributed among modules haphazardly. It is insane to teach the Mexican-American War without including the concerns of Mexicans! The modules also barely discuss imperialism and the anti-imperialism movement, despite the fact that the wars in the Philippines, Cuba, etc. formed bruising political battles. William Randolph Hearsts career was practically made off of these battles, and the Anti-Imperialist movement was essential. The anti-trust and labor movements receive especially poor coverage (Zinn, 2003). The labor struggles in the post-Civil War period were possibly the most important social cleavages of postbellum American society, yet they are mentioned only in a few modules. Again, this lack of focus is somewhat defensible, since these issues are often divisive and cause conservative outcry. Yet I would argue that the curriculum must “teach the issues”. History is controversial, and it is ludicrous to teach any part of American history without realizing that the historical treatment will impinge upon someones life and history. That is the point. Schools need to accept this and prepare for it, not duck the issue while pretending to talk about it. Concepts and competency sequences are well-designed and scrupulously considered, to the programs credit. The program does three things to insure this. First: It is structured specifically to follow off of the 7th grade curriculum and to be different from other world history courses students have taken and will take by that point. Second: The modules begin with difficult social issues and philosophies, so as to prepare students and build their competency and intellectual maturity for tougher historical issues. In this sense, there is a continuum from “soft”, largely cultural and philosophical issues, to “hard” issues of war, geography and conflict. The vertical and horizontal articulation of the curriculum is also well-considered, barring the above caveats (Zane, 1985). The vertical articulation to the ninth grade, for example, is excellent. Ninth grade students are expected to go into elective work on their state or into the other social systems. And in the eighth grade, students begin to use electives, which the curriculum powerfully provides for, by giving students a powerful focus on philosophy. This provides for excellent horizontal articulation. However, the vertical articulation from the seventh grade leaves something to be desired. The seventh grade spreads across a massive geographic and temporal range. But it does not connect the pre-Columbian Indians and the Vikings in such a way that students will be able to understand very early American history. It also does not have enough module work on social conflict, which is vital to the eighth grade curriculum. And it does not spend enough focusing on some of the precursor elements to United States history. There are three that are important: The Magna Carta as well as British legislative and governmental structure, the history and governmental structure of the Netherlands, and the British Revolutions Levellers (Gonick, 2007). It is true that the eighth grade curriculum talks about the Magna Carta, but the problem is that the Magna Carta cannot be understood without reference to the broader context of English history. Further, it is important to understand the development of Parliament, the British Civil War, etc. to truly understand American institutions. The bicameral house is a direct inheritance from the British system. There is an increasing historical tradition noting the similarities between the Netherlands and the United States, particularly the government envisioned by the Articles of Confederation (Gonick, 2007). The Netherlands, like the Articles, had highly decentralized states acting in confederation with lots of independence and autonomy. Further, the Netherlands had immense personal and individual rights which would become the basis for the Bill of Rights and for the American history of civil and individual liberties. But the Netherlands had different geographical, cultural and institutional elements from the United States. The water engineer had absolute authority, which meant that the rights and state autonomy were limited by a powerful authority figure. The Netherlands were geographically and culturally close, allowing coordination without an explicit requirement for institutional hierarchy; this was not true of the United States, which was geographically and culturally immensely diverse. The Netherlands had rejected religious fundamentalism in the way the United States did not. Without understanding the unique background of the Netherlands and their wars for independence, it is impossible to understand the reason for the Articles of Confederations failure. Finally, the Levellers and other early democratic forces in the English Civil War were an early precursor to the rebellious, revolutionary ideals of the Founding Fathers. Without understanding the Levellers respect for freedom of the press, it is difficult to understand the Founding Fathers as well as Shays Rebellion. The curriculum faces a major difficulty of redundancy and of a lack of critical focus. But this is not entirely the curriculums fault. Critical focus on difficult issues can be divisive and lead to a lack of parent support, however important they are to understanding. And the redundancy is often caused by the separate institutional needs of the high school as regards scheduling and surrounding institutions. It is difficult to get to modern issues successfully within nine months, especially with the multiplying complexity and controversy of modern issues. The state can be forgiven its curriculum construction, but the curriculum is still flawed. Works Cited Bradley Commission on History in Schools (1988). Building a History Curriculum: Guidelines for Teaching History in Schools. Washington, DC: Educational Excellence Network. ED 310 008. California Department of Education (2005). History-Social Science Framework for California Public Schools. Retrieved from: http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/cr/cf/documents/histsocsciframe.pdf . Accessed 12/23/2010. Gonick, Larry (2007). The Cartoon History of the Modern World, Volume 1: From Columbus to the U.S. Constitution. Collins: New York. Schlene, V. J (1991). Teaching the 20th-Century History of the United States. ERIC Digest. Sewall, G. T. (April 1988). American History Textbooks: Where do We Go From Here? Phi Delta Kappan 69: 552-58. EJ 370 232. Starr, J. M (1988). The Lessons of the Vietnam War. Mars, PA: Center for Social Studies Education. Taylor, A. (November 22, 2002). The roots of racism. Socialist Worker. Page 8. Zane, L. F. H. (February 1985). Curriculum Development and Articulation. Is It Really Necessary? ERIC. Zinn, H. (2003). Peoples History of the United States. Harper & Collins: New York. Read More