Today’s The Detroit News editorial, “Take the bias out of history teaching”, illustrates that the Florida legislature is not alone in its ignorance of what history is or what a consistitutes a “balanced” approach to teaching issues that may be controversial.
The News believes that asking students to “analyze how ownership and use of automobiles in the United States has contributed to natural resource scarcity and global warming” amounts to “political indoctrination.”
The paper also argues that the inclusion “world population change, urbanization, the suburbs, land use policy, food and energy, plants and animals — even the West Nile virus,” in the state geography standards amounts to “environmental indoctrination.” The News admits that global warming is an “important public policy issue” but argues that it has no place in the social studies curriculum.
(The paper does allow that “Discussing or debating environmental issues might make sense in a science class.”)
The News also does not believe that the Cuban missle crisis should have a part in the study of the Cold War and that asking students how events like the Great Depression “affected different groups of people in different ways with respect to migration, economics, social justice and politics” makes for a slanted curriculum.
It’s clear that like the Florida legislature (and other right-wing groups such as the so-called social studies Contrarians), The Detroit News is not interested in the social studies teaching that encourages students to actually think about issues that affect their world.
This is another example of the incredibly shrinking political spectrum in the US and it does not bode well for democracy or free throught in American society.
June 13, 2006
The Detroit News
Take the bias out of history teaching
Does Michigan want to teach kids to despise autos?
The State Board of Education must decide today whether it is in the education or political indoctrination business.
The proposed curriculum for high school social studies students sounds like it was put together by environmental and political ideologues.
Certainly, social studies is always going to be a controversial subject because Michiganians will have conflicting values about what events and concepts should be emphasized.
Still, in the wake of the controversy that erupted when a state education consultant nearly achieved the elimination of the words “America” and “American” from social studies classes, you’d think the education bureaucracy would be a little more careful about what it proposes to require that all high school students know — especially since students only get two years of social studies.
First, American history will begin for students in 1890, not during the country’s founding years of the 1770s or even the Civil War of the 1860s. The feeling apparently is that students should have learned the basics in elementary and middle school.
But students always need history refreshers, and more sophisticated analysis of historical periods. The start of high school social studies seems like a golden opportunity for more in-depth teaching about George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and others. They help bring alive the abstract governmental and constitutional principles the state wants kids to learn in high school civics.
There’s worse: The state that put the world on wheels will teach school students about the environmental evils of the automobile.
Michigan’s education leaders want students to “analyze how ownership and use of automobiles in the United States has contributed to natural resource scarcity and global warming.” In addition, the geography part of the standards obsesses about world population change, urbanization, the suburbs, land use policy, food and energy, plants and animals — even the West Nile virus.
Global warming and the environment are among a variety of important public policy issues that the proposed curriculum deals with, says Martin Ackley, the press spokesman for the Michigan Department of Education. It has an impact on the nation, he says, and students need to understand these issues.
Discussing or debating environmental issues might make sense in a science class. Otherwise, the social studies approach smacks of environmental indoctrination.
Other issues come in for a political slant as well. America’s Cold War victory is downplayed by emphasizing the U.S.-Soviet confrontation up to the Cuban missile crisis. Students are asked to look at major 20th-century events like the Great Depression and the “Conservative Revolution” through the lens of class warfare — how they “affected different groups of people in different ways with respect to migration, economics, social justice and politics.”
Another favorite: “Explore how the relationship between America’s emphasis on democratic values has conflicted with other nations’ concerns for cultural autonomy.”
Good teachers, of course, can always compensate for a slanted curriculum. But why should they have to?
The State Board of Education should stop the political indoctrination and provide a more balanced approach to American history and government.
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